All Poems
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Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?
© Mary Oliver
Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
Gannets
© Mary Oliver
I am watching the white gannets
blaze down into the water
with the power of blunt spears
and a stunning accuracy--
Toward The Space Age
© Mary Oliver
We must begin to catch hold of everything
around us, for nobody knows what we
may need. We have to carry along
the air, even; and the weight we once
Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks
© Mary Oliver
What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,
Happiness
© Mary Oliver
In the afternoon I watched
the she-bear; she was looking
for the secret bin of sweetness -
honey, that the bees store
The Kingfisher
© Mary Oliver
The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world--so long as you don't mind
Clapp's Pond
© Mary Oliver
Three miles through the woods
Clapp's Pond sprawls stone gray
among oaks and pines,
the late winter fields
That Sweet Flute John Clare
© Mary Oliver
That sweet flute John Clare;
that broken branch Eddy Whitman;
Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity;
My uncle the suicide;
Sand Dabs, Five
© Mary Oliver
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.
The Kookaburras
© Mary Oliver
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to stride out of a cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, pressed against the edge of their cage,
Dogfish
© Mary Oliver
Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.
Why I Wake Early
© Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
The Humpbacks
© Mary Oliver
Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,
Aunt Leaf
© Mary Oliver
Needing one, I invented her -
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.
Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond
© Mary Oliver
So heavy
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings
Marengo
© Mary Oliver
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.
