Variant: Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Source: Thirst
Mary Oliver: Trending quotes
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Mary Oliver:
196
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"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
"The Summer Day"
New and Selected Poems (1992)
Variant: What will you do with your one precious, wild life?
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Variant: 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.
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
"When Death Comes"
New and Selected Poems, Volume 2 (2005)
“Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.”
"Sometimes", § 5
Red Bird (2008)
Context: Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.
"Sometimes", § 7
Red Bird (2008)
Context: Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn't amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me. After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
“Love yourself. Then forget it.
Then, love the world.”
Source: Evidence: Poems
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays