On the Death of Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, who published more than 15 collections of poems since 1963, was known for her observant, hope-filled responses to nature. As the New Yorker said, “For America’s most beloved poet, paying attention to nature is a springboard to the sacred.” Mary, like Prairiewoods, understood and celebrated the holy intersection of ecology and spirituality, that place where care for Earth is an extension of our faith.

On Jan. 17, Prairiewoods joined poetry lovers everywhere in mourning the loss of this voice for Earth. Over our 22-year history, Mary’s poetry has woven its way through our thoughts and mission statement, our programming and our souls. We celebrate that Mary saw every cricket, stone in the river bed and dance of the wind as something to behold with wonder, awe and gratitude.

Memorably, Mary asked us, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” She, in her 83 years, did more than most with her “one wild and precious life,” leaving behind a legacy of poetry and prose that celebrated the simple truths of nature. Here are just a few of our favorite Mary Oliver poems:

Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

—poems by Mary Oliver, American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner
reflection by Andi Lewis, Prairiewoods marketing coordinator

Posted Feb. 6, 2019