Mary Oliver

Inside
 that mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
  that reeking
   leaf-yard, that rippling

"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning

      The sun rises late in this Southern county. And, since the first thing I do when I wake up is go out into the world, I walk here along a dark road. There are many trees. Also, shrubs and vines—sumac, the ivies, honeysuckle.

        There isn't anything in this world but mad love. Not in this world. No tame love, calm love, mild love, no so-so love. And of course, no reasonable love. There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier. But, who wants easier?

In spring the blue azures bow down
at the edges of shallow puddles
to drink the black rainwater.
Then they rise and float away into the fields.

This morning
   two deer
      in the pinewoods,
         in the five a.m. mist,

in a silky agitation,
   went leaping
      down into the shadows

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from
    his purse

Afterwards
the cheerful birds
still woke me—bands
of crows blaring,

and the darling sparrows
chirping for their lives.
Somebody had died.

Just because I was born
precisely here or there,
in some cold city or other,
don't think I don't remember
how I came along like a grain
carried by the flood—

All night
 I float
   in the shallow ponds
    while the moon wanders

burning,
 bone white,
   among the milky stems.

When death carts me off to the bottomlands, when I begin the long work of rising—

Death, whoever and whatever you are, tallest king of
tall kings, grant me these wishes: unstring my bones;
let me be not one thing but all things, and wondrously
scattered; shake me free from my name. Let the wind, and
the wildflowers, and the catbird never know it.

Oh, yesterday, that one, we all cry out. Oh, that one! How rich and possible everything was! How ripe, ready, lavish, and filled with excitement—how hopeful we were on those summer days, under the clean, white racing clouds.

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery,
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.