Mary Oliver

“The poet dreams of the mountain Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts. I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking The rest of my lifetime to do it,...”

“The sweetness of dogs (fifteen) What do you say, Percy? I am thinking of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. So we go and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me s...”

“On the beach, at dawn: Four small stones clearly Hugging each other. How many kinds of love Might there be in the world, And how many formations might they make And who am I ever To imagine...”

“Percy wakes me (fourteen) Percy wakes me and I am not ready. He has slept all night under the covers. Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast. So I hasten up. He is sitting on the...”

“In your hands The dog, the donkey, surely they know They are alive. Who would argue otherwise? But now, after years of consideration, I am getting beyond that. What about the sunflowers? Wha...”

“How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of...”

“Tom Dancer’s gift of a whitebark pine cone You never know What opportunity Is going to travel to you, Or through you. Once a friend gave me A small pine cone- One of a few He found in the sc...”

“I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.”

“From the time of snow-melt, when the creek roared and the mud slid and the seeds cracked, I listened to the earth-talk, the root-wrangle, the arguments of energy, the dreams lying just under...”

“No poet ever wrote a poem to dishonor life, to compromise high ideals, to scorn religious views, to demean hope or gratitude, to argue against tenderness, to place rancor before love, or to...”

“God, rest in my heart and fortify me, take away my hunger for answers”

“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

“Things take the time they take. Don't worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?”

“The Gift Be still, my soul, and steadfast. Earth and heaven both are still watching though time is draining from the clock and your walk, that was confident and quick, has become slow. So, b...”

“There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I...”

“Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.”

“To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.”

“Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.”

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

“Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.”