#poens

an older poem i wrote

Quote #8

MARY OLIVER  |  September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019

Mary Oliver, a prolific poet whose work garnered a wide audience for its clear, direct explorations of the natural world, died yesterday, Thursday 17th January 2019,  at her home in Hobe Sound, Florida. She was 83.

Here’s one of her poems for you to contemplate:

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

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 the 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.

Potassium

Sun Whaled

Sun whaled chair

BJG(Blair Gaulton)March 2020