The Wisdom Of Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver was magic! The raw nature of her poetry struck a deep chord within so many. After news of her death in 2018,  tributes from readers poured in on social media, with people recalling what her poems meant to them. In many ways, what she expressed in her poetry was what so many of us wanted to be able to speak about openly, but felt like it would not be welcomed as it would appear too dark. 

I personally adore her for writing about death and mourning in such a beautiful and honest way. She understood that there is just as much beauty in death as there is in living. She had a reverence for the natural world and frank, but comfortable descriptions of mourning. 

Some of my favorite notable passages are below.

“Love Sorrow”

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must

take care of what has been

given. Brush her hair, help her

into her little coat, hold her hand, 

especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be

sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness

would be yours. Take care, touch

her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not

altogether forget the world before the lesson. 

Have patience in abundance. And do not

ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again, 

abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult, 

sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child. 

And amazing things can happen. And you may see, 

as the two of you go

walking together in the morning light, how

little by little she relaxes; she looks about her; 

she begins to grow. 

“When Death Comes”

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.

“In Blackwater Woods”

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

“No Voyage”

O, I go to see the great ships ride from harbor,

And my wounds leap with impatience; yet I turn back

To sort the weeping ruins of my house:

Here or nowhere I will make peace with the fact.

“The Uses of Sorrow”

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

“The Veil”

There are moments when the veil seems

almost to lift, and we understand what

the earth is meant to mean to us — the

trees in their docility, the hills in

their patience, the flowers and the

vines in their wild, sweet vitality.

Then the Word is within us, and the

Book is put away.

“Ocean”

I am in love with Ocean

lifting her thousands of white hats

in the chop of the storm, 

or lying smooth and blue, the

loveliest bed in the world. 

In the personal life, there is

always grief more than enough, 

a heart-load for each of us

on the dusty road. I suppose

there is a reason for this, so I will be

patient, acquiescent. But I will live

nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting

equally in all the blast and welcome

of her sorrowless, salt self. 

– Mary Oliver