Mary Oliver poems are like taking a stroll through the woods. She talks about animals, trees, and the beauty of the natural world.
Mary asks interesting questions in her poems. It’s like she’s wondering about life and nature, and she wants you to wonder too.
Mary Oliver poems are full of “wow” moments. She describes things so beautifully. She believes that nature can teach us important things about life.
It’s like going on a fun adventure without leaving your room. Mary finds happiness in small, everyday things, like watching a bird or seeing a flower.
Her poems show that you can find joy in the simple things around you. Her questions make you think and discover new things./.
Let’s read some of Mary Oliver famous poems and enjoy them.
Flare
In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.
Live with the beetle, and the wind.
This is the dark bread of the poem.
This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem.
Good-Bye Fox
Could anyone figure it out, to a finality? So
why spend so much time trying. You fuss, we live.
And he stood, slowly, for he was old now, and
ambled away.
I Worried
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Song Of The Builders
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
The Summer 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?
Song Of Autumn
And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
Sleeping In The Forest
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
“Praying”
“It doesn’t have to be the blue iris,
it could be weeds in a vacant lot,
or a few small stones; just pay attention,
then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate,
this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks,
and a silence in which another voice may speak.”
Sleeping In The Forest”
“I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.”
“The Chance To Love Everything”
“All summer I made friends
with the creatures nearby —
they flowed through the fields
and under the tent walls,
or padded through the door,
grinning through their many teeth,
looking for seeds,
suet, sugar; muttering and humming,
opening the breadbox, happiest when
there was milk and music.”
“The Journey
“One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice”
“The Uses Of Sorrow
“Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”
“When Death Comes
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;
When death comes
Like the measle-pox
“Don’t Hesitate”
“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
kind. And much can never be redeemed.”
“Dogfish
“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.”
“Invitation”
“Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy
and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles”
“Starlings In Winter
“Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,”
Morning Poem
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
This is all about Mary Oliver poems.
FAQS
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things:
o love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
American Primitive
Oliver’s first collection of poems, No Voyage and Other Poems, was published in 1963, when she was 28.
Could it be the world itself — the oceans, the meadowlark, the patience of the trees in the wind? Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?
She writes as if she were a romantic poet from centuries ago