I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be singular it will be known to you so that by the end you will thinkโ no, you will realizeโ that it was all the while yourself arranging the words, that it was all the time words that you yourself, out of your heart had been saying.
Mary OliverCan one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.
Mary OliverI try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
Mary OliverAnd I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead / children out of the fields into the text / of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass.
Mary OliverTom Dancerโs 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 scat Of a grizzly In Utah maybe, Or Wyoming. I took it home And did what I supposed He was sure I would do- I ate it, Thinking How it had traveled Through that rough And holy body. It was crisp and sweet. It was almost a prayer Without words. My gratitude, Tom Dancer, For this gift of the world I adore so much And want to belong to. And thank you too, great bear
Mary Oliver