Poems By Mary Oliver

A Dream of Trees
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees, A quiet house, some green and modest acres A little way from every troubling town, A little way from factories, schools, laments. I would have time, I thought, and time to spare, With only streams and birds for company, To build out of my life a few wild stanzas. And then it came to me, that so was death, A little way away from everywhere. There is a thing in me still dreams of trees. But let it go. omesic! for moderation, alf the world"s artists shrin! or fall away. If any find solution, let him tell it. #eanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation Where, as the times implore our true involvement, The blades of every crisis point the way. I would it were not so, but so it is. Who ever made music of a mild day$

A Letter from Home

%he sends me news of blue &ays, frost, 'f stars and now the harvest moon That rides above the stric!en hills. (ightly, she spea!s of cold, of pain, And lists what is already lost. ere where my life seems hard and slow, I read of glowing melons piled Beside the door, and bas!ets filled With fennel, rosemary and dill, While all she could not gather in 'r hid in leaves, grow blac! and falls. ere where my life seems hard and strange, I read her wild e)citement when %tars climb, frost comes, and blue &ays sing. The bro!en year will ma!e no change *pon her wise and whirling heart+ , %he !nows how people always plan To live their lives, and never do. %he will not tell me if she cries. I touch the crosses by her name+ I fold the pages as I rise, And tip the envelope, from which -rift scraps of borage, woodbine, rue.

A Meeting
%he steps into the dar! swamp where the long wait ends. The secret slippery pac!age drops to the weeds. %he leans her long nec! and tongues it between breaths slac! with e)haustion and after a while it rises and becomes a creature li!e her, but much smaller. %o now there are two. And they wal! together li!e a dream under the trees. In early .une, at the edge of a field thic! with pin! and yellow flowers I meet them. I can only stare. %he is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. er child leaps among the flowers, the blue of the s!y falls over me li!e sil!, the flowers burn, and I want to live my life all over again, to begin again, to be utterly wild.

A Visitor
#y father, for e)ample, who was young once and blue,eyed, returns on the dar!est of nights to the porch and !noc!s wildly at the door, and if I answer I must be prepared for his wa)y face, for his lower lip swollen with bitterness. And so, for a long time, I did not answer, but slept fitfully between his hours of rapping. But finally there came the night when I rose out of my sheets and stumbled down the hall. The door fell open and I !new I was saved and could bear him, pathetic and hollow, with even the least of his dreams frozen inside him, and the meanness gone. And I greeted him and as!ed him into the house, and lit the lamp, and loo!ed into his blan! eyes in which at last I saw what a child must love, I saw what love might have done had we loved in time.

An Afternoon In The Stacks

/losing the boo!, I find I have left my head inside. It is dar! in here, but the chapters open their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound, words ad&usting themselves to their meaning. (ong passages open at successive pages. An echo, continuous from the title onward, hums behind me. 0rom in here, the world looms, a &ungle redeemed by these lin!ed sentences carved out when an author traveled and a reader !ept the way open. When this boo! ends I will pull it inside,out li!e a soc! and throw it bac! in the library. But the rumor of it will haunt all that follows in my life. A candle flame in Tibet leans when I move.

At Blackwater Pon
At Blac!water 1ond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drin! a long time. It tastes li!e stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, wa!ing the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that &ust happened$

At !reat Pon
At 2reat 1ond the sun, rising, scrapes his orange breast on the thic! pines, and down tumble a few orange feathers into the dar! water. 'n the far shore a white bird is standing li!e a white candle ,,, or a man, in the distance, in the clasp of some meditation ,,, while all around me the lilies are brea!ing open again from the blac! cave of the night. (ater, I will consider what I have seen ,,, what it could signify ,,, what words of adoration I might ma!e of it, and to do this I will go indoors to my des! ,,, I will sit in my chair ,,, I will loo! bac! into the lost morning in which I am moving, now, li!e a swimmer, so smoothly, so peacefully, I am almost the lily ,,, almost the bird vanishing over the water on its sleeves of night.

A"g"st
When the blac!berries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thin!ing of nothing, cramming the blac! honey of summer into my mouth+ all day my body accepts what it is. In the dar! cree!s that run by there is this thic! paw of my life darting among the blac! bells, the leaves+ there is this happy tongue.

A"nt Leaf
3eeding one, I invented her , the great,great,aunt dar! as hic!ory called %hining,(eaf, or -rifting,/loud or The,Beauty,of,the,3ight. -ear aunt, I"d call into the leaves, and she"d rise up, li!e an old log in a pool, and whisper in a language only the two of us !new the word that meant follow, and we"d travel cheerful as birds out of the dusty town and into the trees where she would change us both into something quic!er , two fo)es with blac! feet, two sna!es green as ribbons, two shimmering fish , and all day we"d travel. At day"s end she"d leave me bac! at my own door with the rest of my family, who were !ind, but solid as wood and rarely wandered. While she, old twist of feathers and birch bar!, would wal! in circles wide as rain and then float bac! scattering the rags of twilight on fluttering moth wings+ or she"d slouch from the barn li!e a gray opossum+ or she"d hang in the mil!y moonlight burning li!e a medallion, this bone dream, this friend I had to have, this old woman made out of leaves.

Beyon the Snow Belt

'ver the local stations, one by one, Announcers list disasters li!e dar! poems That always happen in the s!ull of winter. But once again the storm has passed us by4 (ovely and moderate, the snow lies down While shouting children hurry bac! to play, And scarved and smiling citizens once more %weep down their easy paths of pride and welcome. And what else might we do$ (es us be truthful. Two counties north the storm has ta!en lives. Two counties north, to us, is far away, , A land of trees, a wing upon a map, A wild place never visited, , so we 0orget with ease each far mortality. 1eacefully from our frozen yards we watch 'ur children running on the mild white hills. This is the landscape that we understand, , And till the principle of things ta!es root, ow shall e)amples move us from our calm$ I do not say that is not a fault. I only say, e)cept as we have loved, All news arrives as from a distant land.

Black Oaks
'!ay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary, or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance and comfort. 3ot one can manage a single sound though the blue &ays carp and whistle all day in the branches, without the push of the wind. But to tell the truth after a while I"m pale with longing for their thic! bodies ruc!led with lichen and you can"t !eep me from the woods, from the tonnage of their shoulders, and their shining green hair. Today is a day li!e any other4 twenty,four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. (isten, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another ,, why don"t you get going$ 0or there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don"t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don"t want to sell my life for money, I don"t even want to come in out of the rain.