Mindful, by Mary Oliver

Fantasia No 3 in D minor, K 397 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
with Emil Gilels

Every Day
   I see or hear
      something
         that more or less
kills me
   with delight,
      that leaves me
         like a needle
in the haystack
   of light.
      It is what I was born for—
         to look, to listen,
to lose myself
   inside this soft world—
      to instruct myself
         over and over
in joy,
   and acclamation.
      Nor am I talking
         about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
   the very extravagant—
      but of the ordinary,
         the common, the very drab
the daily presentations.
   Oh, good scholar,
      I say to myself,
         how can you help
but grow wise
   with such teachings
      as these—
         the untrimmable light
of the world,
   the ocean's shine,
      the prayers that are made
         out of grass?

      

I want to write something so simply, by Mary Oliver

Pablo de Sarasate - Zigeunerweisen
with Sergey Krylov, violin

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 own heart
had been saying.


from Evidence: Poems (Beacon Press, 2009)
thank you Parker J. Palmer for the inspiration

When I Am Among the Trees, by Mary Oliver

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, II


When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."



in Thirst, 2007

Black Oaks, by Mary Oliver

Gabriel Urbain Fauré - "Pie Jesu", Requiem Op.48 with Lucia Popp

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,
or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage
of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,
I don't even want to come in out of the rain.


from Blue Iris: Poems and Essays