Mary Oliver

March 9, 2015

Evidence



“I want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as you read
you keep feeling it
and though it be my story
it will be common,
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think—
no, you will realize—
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your heart


had been saying.”

Evidence – Mary Oliver

August 20, 2012

There’s a Place…


There’s a place where the town ends,

and the fields begin.

It’s not marked but the feet know it,

also the heart that is longing for refreshment

and, equally, for repose.

Someday we’ll live in the sky.

Meanwhile, the house of our lives is this green world.

The fields, the ponds, the birds.

The thick black oaks – surely they are

the invention of something wonderful.

And the tiger lilies.

And the runaway honeysuckle that no one will ever trim again.

Where is it? I ask, and then

my feet know it.

One jump, and I’m home.

“Boundaries” by Mary Oliver.

Infrared photograph of a place at the edge of town – taken with my converted camera.