On this day, in 2019, a beloved poet departed our earthly existence... So many fine lines of hers, that spur us on our Journey & speak to the life of the Spirit.
Musing on two, the one below from an interview with NPR, I believe:
It's as big a mistake to domesticate a great poet as it is to make a household pet out of great prophet!
Oliver was a popular American poet & important cultural
figure. She was one of those artists who served as a kind of corrective to our harried times.
Oliver’s prayerful poems are a reminder to be patient, live with awe and return to nature. She lived a full life and apparently was suffering, towards the end.
What she left behind will continue to sustain countless souls 🙇🏻♂️ Oliver mattered in the lives of many, not all of whom were regular readers of poetry, either.
She touched the core of life with her simple words & showed us how to pay better attention & be more alive...
Here, is one of her better-known and admired poems, a profound meditation with her characteristic light touch, on the art of living and leaving... 🙏🏼✨🕊
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 his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like 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 common
as 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 life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a 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.
—Rest in Peace, Mary Oliver, I hope you’re free, now...
You can listen to my reading of this fine poem, on Soundcloud