Mary Oliver's Spirit

In Oliver's book, Thirst, there are 43 new poems. You'd expect to find poems about nature and spirituality. In this volume, she also explores grief and faith.

Some of the poems sound like prayers-

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice can speak.

Patching a few words together into a prayer, or into a poem is, as she writes early in the book, her doing her life's work - "loving the world."

As she spends a "Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond," Oliver writes:

Every day I walk out into the world

to be dazzled, then to be reflective

These poems are a kind of natural praying. They are natural in the sense of nature, full of wonder and awe for the beauty of what surrounds us, and they are natural in their inherent sense of right and wrong and their higher qualities of human nature.

Belief isn't always easy.

But this much I have learned—

if not enough else—

to live with my eyes open.

I know what everyone wants

is a miracle.

This wasn't a miracle.

Unless, of course, kindness—

as now and again

some rare person has suggested—

is a miracle.

As surely it is.

Celan said: "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul."

I am going to try to write a natural prayer like Oliver's.

online poems by Mary Oliver here