Mary Oliver

Sometimes I dreamthat everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly,and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness__nd sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing; and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.

I know many lives worth living.

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don__ 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. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that__ often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don__ be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)

the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled__o cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting __ver and over announcing your placein the family of things.

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 is over, I don't want to wonderif 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.

The Pond"August of another summer, and once again I am drinking the sunand the lilies again are spread across the water. I know now what they want is to touch each other. I have not been here for many yearsduring which time I kept living my life. Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he could sing, I wish I could sing. A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate. This is how it has been, and this is how it is: All my life I have been able to feel happiness, except whatever was not happiness, which I also remember. Each of us wears a shadow. But just now it is summer againand I am watching the lilies bow to each other, then slide on the wind and the tug of desire, close, close to one another, Soon now, I'll turn and start for home. And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.

The man who has many answersis often foundin the theaters of informationwhere he offers, graciously,his deep findings.While the man who has only questions,to comfort himself, makes music.

It does no good to bark at the television,I said. I__e tried it too. So he stopped.

And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old__r so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?

I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.He is sweeter than soap.He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace,which can't even bark...

LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT(PERCY THREE)He puts his cheek against mineand makes small, expressive sounds.And when I'm awake, or awake enoughhe turns upside down, his four pawsin the airand his eyes dark and fervent.Tell me you love me, he says.Tell me again.Could there be a sweeter arrangement?Over and overhe gets to ask it.I get to tell.