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Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.

Mary Oliver

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Mary Oliver
Age: 83 †
Born: 1935
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: January 17
Climate Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Maple Heights
Ohio
Mary Jane Oliver
Good
Walk
Thinking
Dead
Like
Walks
Morning
Around
Pond
Ever
Ponds
Heart
Close
Every
Doors

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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
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The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.
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He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
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You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
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What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy.
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So every day So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.
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I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
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For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
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...Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.
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One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.
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And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?
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Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?
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The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms.
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Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
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On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
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... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.
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I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.
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A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
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There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
Mary Oliver