Tag Archives: mary oliver

Daily Dose of Kindness, LLM Poetry, Poetry

Wind

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Oh Wind

Take me away

Take my voice, my tears, my broken heart

You are so mighty 

With your roar 

And your sound

A raging river

A passing jetliner

An amtrak train

 

You who make the trees swing  and sway

You who pull the leaves from their branches

Exposing their true nature

And their bare  bodies

 

You who push and pull the birds in flight

Holding them still in mid air

As they flap their wings in fury against you

A game, a challenge, a test

 

As I sit safe inside

This warm box of love and life

With candles lit

Sweet smells of morning

And my little dog

You storm and scurry

Rage and Remove

Pick up and pass around

The surroundings of this home

 

And somehow I trust

That you will drop everything

Right in it’s place

 

Do that to me

Do that to my wandering mind

Do that to my worry and my woe

Take it

Throw it

Wind it up and send it on it’s way

 

Carry me like the leaf

Pull me from the branches 

Then place me perfectly there

In that place

On the ground

Sound

Asleep

 

LLM

Poetry

The Bleeding-Heart by Mary Oliver

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beautiful bleeding heart bloom blooming
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Bleeding-heart
by Mary Oliver
from New and Selected Poems
Volume Two

I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived
for sixty years if not more, and has never
missed a spring without rising and spreading
itself into a glossy bush, with many small red
hearts dangling. Don’t you think that deserves
a little thought? The woman who planted it
has been gone for a long time, and everyone
who saw it in that time has also died or moved
away and so, like so many stories, this one can’t
get finished properly. Most things that are
important, have you noticed, lack a certain
neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to
remember my grandmother’s pleasure when
the dissolve of winter was over and the green
knobs appeared and began to rise, and to cre-
ate their many hearts. One would say she was
a simple woman, made happy by simple
things. I think this was true. And more than
once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.

Poetry

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

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red water flowers flower
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com


Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
 
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
 
and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
 
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
 
the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging —
 
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
 
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver 
© Mary Oliver