The evening of January 17, 2018, I posted the above photo with this quote:
“And mostly I’m grateful that I take this world so seriously.”
~Mary Oliver in “The Gift.”
My Facebook and Instagram feeds are filled with Mary quotes. She inspired me to pay attention and to be astonished. When we moved to Florida, I dreamed of meeting her. I will turn 70 in a week. It would have been the best birthday gift.
Yesterday, January 17, 2019, at the age of 83, Mary danced out of this world. She lived only an hour away, but I will never get to meet her now. My heart hurts, but I’m grateful she taught me to see and be amazed. I’m grateful for her legacy of unfancy poetry and essays. She was and is still a gift.
One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More of less like people–a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes. Hello Tom, hello Andy. Hello Archibald, Violet, and Clarissa Bluebell. Hello Lilian Willow, and Noah, the oak tree I have hugged and kissed every first day of spring for the last thirty seven years. And in reply its thousands of leaves tremble! What a life is ours! Doesn’t anybody in the world anymore want to get up in the
middle of the night and
sing?
I walk, all day, across the heaven-verging field.
In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be. Wordsworth studied himself and found the subject astonishing. Actually what he studied was his relationship to the harmonies and also the discords of the natural world. That’s what created the excitement.
And whoever thinks these are worthy, breathy words I am writing down is kind. Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.
~Mary Oliver’s first words in Upstream: Selected Essays
Why I Wake Early
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with the warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
god morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindess.
~Mary Oliver in “Why I Wake Early,” her first poem in Why I Wake Early
Do you “know” Mary Oliver? What are some of your favorite poems / lines?
Sandra, I had heard of Mary Oliver, but never read anything she wrote until now. Oh, what a blessed treat! I’m definitely going to look for some of her books.
But such a shame you won’t have the chance to meet this dear soul on this side of heaven. It would have been the perfect birthday gift.
Blessings!
Oh, you will love her words so much, Martha.
Thank you so much for sharing this inspiration, Sandy. You know, I have been up in the middle of the night and have wanted to sing, but I’d wake the house! Alas. Singing is a big part of my life, which is likely on reason I love poetry. I love its music. But Ms. Oliver had a way of making lines sing sans cacophony. There is some music that is discordant, and it is not pleasant to the ear. Discordant words that only make sense to the poet who wrote them are frankly not of much use and hurt the head to try to dicipher. Oh perhaps to the poet they make sense, to be sure, but then, why bother to share and publish them? Ms. O. made her words as accessible as the sun in the sky and the sunflowers in the field, and that was and will be the genius of them. I am reminded too that: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” How can we each but be poets when we look to the beauty of this world and to our Creator and pen *that*? It’s my prayer that we as Christians would always declare His glory in anything that we pen! Thanks again for sharing, Sandy. I love what your words declare, because they always point to Him!
Love
Lynn
Absolutely, Lynn. Poetry and music are intertwined, and the early poems were sung. And how can anyone who pays attention not be astonished? Because God makes himself known through the things He’s made–His workmanship, His poemia.
Hi Sandra,
There is such wisdom in those last lines of Why I Wake Early. “Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.” It’s so easy to start the day with overwhelmedness and distraction or even fear. In happiness, in kindness. Thank you for posting this poem.
–Nancy
One of my favorite of her poems. Thanks for coming by, Nancy.