Mary Oliver

A quiet Sunday morning, as we consider this poem by Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019), American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild.

Morning In A New Land

In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.
Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away,

And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.

--Mary Oliver

[from Devotions. © Penguin Press, 2017.]