Mary Oliver Mashup Poem - May 6, 2019

 

 

 

OM3 - Observations Mary Oliver Modestly Offers Me

 

Look! Look! (“The Egret”)

Look, and look again. (“To Begin With, the Sweet Grass”)

How dull we grow from hurrying here and there! (“Going to Walden”)

No doubt clocks are ticking loudly all over the world. (“Softest of Mornings”)

The years to come – this is a promise – will grant you ample time. (“Terns”)

Fields everywhere invite you into them. (“Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches”)

You have a life – just imagine that! (“To Begin With, the Sweet Grass”)

The past is the past, and the present is what your life is and you are capable of choosing what that will be. (“Mornings at Blackwater”)

Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives. (“Wild, Wild”)

The birds who own nothing – the reason they can fly! (“Storage”)

So listen to them and watch them, singing as they fly. (“Whistling Swans”)

A poem should always have birds in it. (“Singapore”)

For each of us, there is the daily life. Let us live it, gesture by gesture. (“At the River Clarion”)

When the thumb of fear lifts, we are so alive! (“May”)

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. (“Mysterious, Yes”)

We are nourished by the mystery. (“The Fish”)

   -Kim Johnson, composed with borrowed lines from the poetry of Mary Oliver