Oliver is a favorite poet, worth rereading and worth finding more of her work. ( )

green

"Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy, and all the tricks my body knows— the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps, and the mind clicking and clicking— don’t seem enough to carry me through this world and I think: how I would like to have wings"

So writes Mary Oliver in one of the first poems of this collection---and throughout she exposes her confrontation with mortality and her and our earthbound nature.

Selected in reverse chronological order, the poems show the growth of the poet over three decades. He language is vivid and her poetic seeing often surprisingly exact:

"the black snake jellies forward"

"and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees"

She loves life, loves nature, with the passion of one who knows mortality in the flight of an owl's hunger. Spend some time with this poet and the wonderful words she leaves behind for us to follow, like a trail through the forest. ( )

Every poem in here is perfection, but my favorites are , of course, "Morning Poem" and "Wild Geese." Here's "Wild Geese":
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things." ( )

Too bad this was a library book, as these are poems to read again and again. ( )