Mary Oliver's Poems

Mary Oliver




























Buddhists would like to claim Mary Oliver as one of their own. There are Christians and gnostics who may have equally strong feelings. The spiritual contingent of the women’s movement has an strong vote to make her one of their own, but so do many other poets and lovers of the English language. Her vision can hold all these viewpoints. The sensitivity of her inner search is in the lineage of Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay. As I listen to her spare eloquent language, I can feel its connection to the American heartland as well as the New England coast.




A few of Ms. Oliver’s poems:

DREAMS
Gratitude
I Want to Write Something So Simply
Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
Maybe
Mindful
Night and the River
Poem
Reckless Poem
The Summer Day
The Buddha’s Last Instruction
White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field
Wild Geese

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Acquainted With The Night

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by Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain — and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. Stieglitz: ‘Reflections—Night’, New York, 1896 (in Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies, 1897) Please click here to go to a page I created for more of Frost’s poems.
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White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

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Detail from Audubon Plate 121 Snowy Owl by Mary Oliver Coming down out of the freezing sky with its depths of light, like an angel, or a Buddha with wings, it was beautiful, and accurate, striking the snow and whatever was there with a force that left the imprint of the tips of its wings — five feet apart — and the grabbing thrust of its feet, and the indentation of what had been running through the white valleys of the snow — and then it rose, gracefully, and flew back to the frozen marshes to lurk there, like a little lighthouse, in the blue shadows — so I thought: maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us — as soft as feathers — that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes, not without amazement, and let ourselves be carried, as through the translucence of mica, to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow, that is nothing but light —
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DREAMS

by Mary Oliver All night the dark buds of dreams open richly. In the center of every petal is a letter, and you imagine if you could only remember and string them all together they would spell the answer. It is a long night, and not an easy one— you have so many branches, and there are diversions— birds that come and go, the black fox that lies down to sleep beneath you, the moon staring with her bone-white eye. Finally you have spent all the energy you can and you drag from the ground the muddy skirt of your roots and leap awake with two or three syllables like water in your mouth and a sense of loss—a memory not yet of a word, certainly not yet the answer— only how it feels when deep in the tree all the locks click open, and the fire surges through the wood, and the blossoms blossom. If you want to read more of Mary Oliver’s poems, here are some that I like.
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