Thursday, January 24, 2019

Thursday Poem - When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

--Mary Oliver

4 comments:

Barbara Rogers said...

I do hope Mary Oliver's transition was just as her life was, quiet, peaceful, observant, aware. May her friends know peace.

Anonymous said...

I love that poem. RIP Mary Oliver

M. E. Martinsen said...

I have mourned Mary's death, but then have picked up the candle she lit with her words and held it up to see what is around me.

Still thinking said...

Her words survive her physical presence. How much she left us! I am so grateful for having found Mary so many years ago.