From the blog Stories of Her – well worth following!
Mary Oliver has been an extraordinary influence on my choices as to which lens I priorise in terms of how I view the world.
‘I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,
How to fall down into grass,
How to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed,
How to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’
– The Summer Day (1992) [excerpt].
When death comeslike 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;
when death comeslike the measle-pox when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower,
as commonas a field daisy,
and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage,
and something precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world
Mary Oliver
When Death Comes
Leave a Reply