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There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether.

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
Another
Altogether
True
Minded
World
Customs
People
Obligation
Heedless
Hopefully
Notion
Obligations
Creative
Reckless
Social
Absent

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We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
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I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
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How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light
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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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Music: what so many sentences aspire to be.
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A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
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Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
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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.
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I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
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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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At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?
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Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
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And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.
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I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
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As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.
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As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.
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The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
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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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The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things
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He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
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