Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

Excerpt:
You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,