Today, poet Mary Oliver died at age 83. I have included so many of her poems on this blog and her words have brought me comfort and connected me to my humanity. This morning I pause in gratitude for her life.
| When death comes |
| like the hungry bear in autumn; |
| when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse |
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| to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; |
| when death comes |
| like the measle-pox |
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| when death comes |
| like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, |
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| I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: |
| what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? |
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| 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, |
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| and I think of each life as a flower, as common |
| as a field daisy, and as singular, |
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| and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, |
| tending, as all music does, toward silence, |
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| and each body a lion of courage, and something |
| precious to the earth. |
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| 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. |
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| When it's over, I don't want to wonder |
| if I have made of my life something particular, and real. |
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| I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, |
| or full of argument. |
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| I don't want to end up simply having visited this world |
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Mary Oliver
When Death Comes
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