Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935) is an American poet. She has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet."
My work is loving the world.
A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them. . . A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . .
Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation
How many mysteries have you seen in your lifetime? How many nets pulled full over the boat's side, each silver body ready or not falling into submission? How many roses in early summer uncurling above the pale sands then falling back in unfathomable willingness? And what can you say? Glory to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the silver fish. Glory to time and the wild fields, and to joy. And to grief's shock and torpor, its near swoon.
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
Oh, yesterday, that one, we all cry out. Oh, that one! How rich and possible everything was! How ripe, ready, lavish, and filled with excitement--how hopeful we were on those summer days, under the clean, white racing clouds. Oh, yesterday!
. . . the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.
Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads. (from “Mysteries, Yes”)
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old-or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. . . Of course I have to give up, but by then I'm half crazy with the wonder of it--the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.
One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.