House of Light

by Mary Oliver

This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" (one of the poems in this volume)

Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award

Winner of the 1991 Boston Globe Lawrence L. Winship Book Award

Genres: Poetry, Nature, Nonfiction, Contemporary, Spirituality, Philosophy, LGBT

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Mary Jane Oliver was an 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.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?’

Despite owning Oliver’s two volume New and Selected Poems, I couldn’t resist snatching up this tiny collection when I stumbled upon it at a library book sale in the fifty cents bin. Although it was her American Primitive that achieved her Pulitzer recognition, House of Light remains my favorite collection of Oliver’s picturesque poetry. After spending a few days in poetic rapture through each word and staggered stanzas, I realized the former owner had discretely placed a small dot next to three different poems in the table of contents. To my joy, these three poems—assumingly singled out for being the ones closest to the former owner’s heart—coincided with my personal favorites as well. In a collection about the unity of all life as it breaches the limits of life and into death, it seemed all the more poignant to find two people across space and time sharing Oliver’s words and, as if in subtle conversation, agreeding upon the words that moved us the most. House of Light, Oliver’s metaphor of the afterlife, glides like a swan into the pond of your heart, sending out little ripples of joy and comfort as she looks towards death without fear but with acceptance and wonderment.

Some Questions You Might Ask
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

The soul is a theme that floats through this collection as Oliver grapples with the possibility of its existence and the question of what becomes of us when we die. Oliver asks ‘why should I hate it, and not the anteater who loves her children’, and rejects the notion that humans are above any other living thing on earth. She envies the quiet life of flowers in the breeze in Lilies, she spends a day contemplating a mother bear moving down a mountain with ‘her wordlessness, her perfect lovein Spring, and seems to find her inner peace when deep in the wilderness. Out doors, in the company of nature and not people, is when the quiet answers to the universe seem to whisper themselves in her heart. Oliver seems herself a Buddhist as she declares a soul, a light inside all living things, none less beautiful than the rest.

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Taken from the conclusion to The Ponds, this reflects Oliver’s belief in the perfect universal soul, that the light of existence burns away the impurities. Her words are immensely uplifting and empowering as she urges us to maintain a quiet serenity in our hearts. Her words are always so clear, simple and still, like a cool body of water on a sunny day where the rocks on the bottom many feet down can be seen from the surface. Reading her words are like a walk in the forest, refreshing and humbling as they remind you of the things that really matter in life.

The Buddha’s Last Instruction
“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

This light, this purity, speaks to us in every poem. Oliver reminds us to be good to one another, to respect the world around us, and to humble oneself in its immense beauty and mysteries. We are each insignificant, just a speck in all this vastness, yet we are also ‘of inexplicable value’ at the same time. We must accept love and give love, we must try to be a light, because a light can spread and cover the world, comforting and improving the lives of all those it touches.

Singapore
In Singapore, in the airport,
A darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,
which is dull enough.
She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop
and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life. I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,
The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

This is such a moving poem (one of the three singled out with a dot in the Table of Contents) and is unique in this collection, being an incredible humanizing poem as it turns a eye of pity on our species instead of an eye of wonder towards nature. It is a perfect example of Oliver remembering the Buddha’s words, to not look down on others with disgust and remember that a ‘light can shine out of a life’ and that we all value our own existence, regardless of where in the social standings it falls. We watch Oliver chastise herself for her initial disgust, her initial pretentions against the lower classes of society, and learn to love the smiling face.

Death is a constant companion lurking behind each rock and tree in Oliver’s poems. Yet she never applies a foreboding tone, but instead looks at it as the natural course. A flower never fears its demise, so why should we. Her impressions of death reshape as the collection progresses, often asking if there is a life on the other side, often viewing it as a void or then a darkness, yet finally, in White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field, Oliver reveals to be pure brilliant beauty. To merely give the final few lines that I wish to highlight, instead of the entire poem, would be an insult.

Coming down out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,
it was beautiful, and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —
and the grabbing thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:
maybe death isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.

What a phenomenal depiction of death, as a white owl that silently snatches us from life. Death is not to be feared, it is a comforting light, warm like a heavy blanket, in which we are ‘washed out of our bones.’ How can one fear the end when viewing it like this?

This collection is breathtakingly beautiful, and probably my favorite of all Oliver’s works (although Dream Work has a few favorite poems). Death and the soul are discussed with such delicate, simple phrases of supreme potency that will wash the readers heart and soul in order to make it glow with the light of the Buddha. Mary Oliver is a national treasure.
5/5

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
I'd seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night

under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them — I swear it! —

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,

I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite poet. I find it most difficult, almost impossible in fact, to write a review of an entire book of poems. All I can do is to is to quote which I like among them. Here, it is this one entitled “Some Questions You Might Ask”—


Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a very ironic person. I've learned that over the past couple of years: of course I like some irony and some sarcasm now and again, and it will nearly always make me laugh, but what I really love is earnestness. Maybe I should be reading more poetry.

Mary Oliver's collection of poetry is about nature and light and loveliness, and there is a pervasive sense of open-heartedness and earnestness throughout that I found to be really moving. The majority of poems in this collection are just her sitting by a pond and observing what she sees, but she seems absolutely stunned by the wonder of it all, and the way she captures that wonder in language makes it infectious.

I think her best poems, though, are the ones where people intrude into or collide with nature, with results that range from messy to tragic to transcendent. "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" invokes Gustav Mahler to describe the sense of connection that creativity and nature can forge between people who have never met. The author wanders outside on Gustav Mahler's birthday, and


For hours I wandered
over the fields

and the only thign that kept me company
was a song,
it glided along
with my delicious dark happiness,

my heavy,
bristling and aching delight
at the world
which has been like this

forever and forever -
the leaves,
the birds, the ponds,
the loneliness,

and sometimes,
from a lifetime ago
and another country
such a willing and lilting companion -

a song
made so obviously for me.
At what unknowable cost.
And by a stranger.


But there are also poems about how nature can break people, for all of its beauty, either by its lack or by its overabundance. There is a poem about a starving boy, and - probably my favorite in the collection - there is a poem about van Gogh called "Everything" which is absolutely lovely:


No doubt in Holland,
when van Gogh was a boy,
there were swans drifting
over the green sea
of the meadows, and no doubt
on some warm afternoon
he lay down and watched them,
and almost thought: this is everything.
What drove him
to get up and look further
is what saves this world,
even as it breaks
the hearts of men.
In the mines where he preached,
where he studied tenderness,
there were only men, all of them
streaked with dust.
For years he would reach out
toward the darkness.
But no doubt, like all of us,
he finally remembered
everything, including the white birds,
weightless and unaccountable,
floating around the towns
of grit and hopelessness -
and this is what would finish him:
not the gloom, which was only terrible,
but those last yellow fields, where clearly
nothing in the world mattered, or ever would
but the insensible light.


It's such a lovely collection of hope and joy, but just enough tinged with darkness and sadness to make it feel real and weighty and tangible.


Recommend some poetry to me!

[Ebony (EKG) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“So I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us-

as soft as feathers-
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple shadow-
that is nothing but light- scalding, aortal light-
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.”

Mary Oliver, you are light. Your poetry is light. 🕊

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled--
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery."

Having enjoyed a great many of Mary Oliver's poetry collections, I believe she spent most of her life in that dazzled state she describes, awed by the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of undisturbed nature going about its business of existing. Lucky for us, she chronicled those most exquisite moments in poetry. This collection was published in 1990, and it cements my opinion that her older work is superior to her more recent material.

I tend to fall in love with a piece of a poem rather than the entire thing, so here are a couple of my favorite portions.

From The Notebook

"Now a few of the lilies
are a faint flamingo inside
their white hearts,
and there is still time
to let the last roses of sunrise
float down
into my uplifted eyes."


From Fish Bones

"This morning

I picked up something
like a honey-combed heart,
and something else
like a frozen flower

at the foot of the waves
and I thought of Da Vinci--
the way he kept dreaming
of what was inside the darkness--

how it wanted to rise
on its invisible muscle,
how it wanted to shine
like fire."


And one entire poem:

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful
and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings--
five feet apart--and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys
of the snow--

and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes,
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows--
so I thought:
maybe death
isn't darkness after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us--

as soft as feathers--
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow--
that is nothing but light--scalding, aortal light--
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.

[Hallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection focuses a lot on mortality and the afterlife but also renewal and resilience. Oliver uses nature (of course) to explore these themes and cycles of life.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third book of Mary Oliver's poems that I've read this year, and they started to feel a little "samey."  Some poems in this volume felt almost smug.  But the magic is definitely still there.

Turtle
Now I see it—
it nudges with its bulldog head
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal

who is leading her soft children
from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps
close to the edge
and they follow closely, the good children—

the tender children,
the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet
into the darkness.
And now will come—I can count on it—the murky splash,

the certain victory
of that pink and gassy mouth, and the frantic
circling of the hen while the rest of the chicks
flare away over the water and into the reeds, and my heart

will be most mournful
on their account. But, listen,
what's important?
Nothing's important

except that the great and cruel mystery of the world,
of which this is a part,
not to be denied. Once,
I happened to see, on a city street, in summer,

a dusty, fouled turtle plodded along—
a snapper—
broken out I suppose from some backyard cage—
and I knew what I had to do—

I looked it right in the eyes, and I caught it—
I put it, like a small mountain range,
into a knapsack, and I took it out
of the city, and I let it

down into the dark pond, into
the cool water,
and the light of the lilies,
to live.

[Kaeli Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and calming as ever, these poems make the best accompaniment to misty mornings and herbal teas. reading a Mary Oliver poem feels like holding something very small and precious in your mind like cupped hands.

[H.A. Leuschel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was hypnotized by this book. Poems to read again and again! Highly recommended!

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

I'd seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the night

under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them-I swear it!-

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone.

I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?", "and, sometimes from a lifetime ago and another country such a willing and lilting companion - a song made so obviously for me. At what unknowable cost. And by a stranger." and "this is a poem about loving the world and everything in it: the self, the perpetual muscle, the passage in and out, the bristling swing of the sea." stopped me in my tracks, grabbed me by the neck and made me reflect on life in ways I have never done before. Thank you Mary Oliver, for speaking the exact words I needed to hear in this moment in time. First collection down, and I cannot wait for the next.

[Talia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me want to lay down in the grass and then go off the grid. 5 stars

[heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that travels with me wherever I go. I am always reading a poem or two. It is a forever read - not one I can mark as read.

Mary Oliver speaks to my soul through the profundities of nature.

Thank you, Mary.

[Richard Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patient observation of nature, beautiful descriptions of animals and meadows and woods and human hearts, and how human longing is reflected in the ways of the natural world...

First collection by Oliver that I read, and I loved it.

Some poems have Pessoa-esque admiration toward the simplicity of our nature.

-------------------------------------------
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish questions.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

House of Light. I find the title to be beyond appropriate for this particular collection of poems. This book does house light, and it slips through the cracks that make it a home, hand in hand with hope.

“I want to believe that imperfections are nothing –
that the light is everything – that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.”

Mary Oliver reminds us that pain is not the only thing to cause dents in the sculpture our soul habits. Love, as well as joy, opens wounds; wonder leaves scars behind. Are these faults, though? Are these flaws? It depends on how you choose to look at them. For Mary Oliver they are who we are.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

I adore how her poetry seems to refuse to move on, how it seems not to even accept it as a possibility. Instead, it introduces the idea of carrying on.

This collection of poetry thrives on what we would perhaps call the ingenuity of some of the creatures we share this world with. Mary Oliver paints them, reveals them to us, as an example to follow.

“they beat their muscular wings,
they dream of flying
for another million years

over the water,
over the ferns,
over the world’s roughage
as it bleeds and deepens.”

They go on, even though they know not what to expect. Whatever happens, happens. They deal with it as it comes, one step at a time. They don’t dwell on what ifs. They embrace what they are, who they are, and that’s exactly whom they embody, no fear of repercussions.

“Have you ever found something beautiful and maybe just in time?”

It’s such a stunning and tender way of looking at the world.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lilies


I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall in the wedge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,
amd have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful

as that old idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.........


My love for MO begins with the "wedge of the wind" "no shelter from the tongues of cattle" and strengthens with "as wonderful as that old idea." But it explodes where she transcends genre, inserts herself, a challenge, perhaps a failing, and waits all day for the touch of the hummingbird. As a student of nature she is expert, she is a master poet, but as a struggling flawed human she becomes my perfect guide. As she bends "Lilies" into a meditation on Van Gogh she adds in a cerebral element that never loses her attitude of praise and appreciation. I read her with quiet hunger.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume of nature poems confirmed Mary Oliver as one of my favorite contemporary poets.

[Irmak ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

"...and how could anyone believe
that anything in this world
is only what it appears to be-

that anything is ever final-
that anything, in spite of its absence,
ever dies
a perfect death?"

This was my first Mary Oliver collection and I must say, this made me want to live in a forest, now more than ever.

[sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

mary oliver continues to solidify her position as my favorite poet! this collection is beautiful and tender, which you can always expect ms oliver to deliver

[Gabrielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

unflinching and steadfast. life must go on, as it always has. foxes are always gonna gnaw on old bird bones and turtles’ heads are always gonna look like big green toes. mary oliver teaches us the important art of noticing.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could ascribe colors to this collection of poems, I would chose several shades of green. Don’t ask me to elaborate further.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Αγαπώ την ποίηση της Mary Oliver, την αγάπη της για τη φύση και τη ζωή και την πνευματικότητα, την παντελή έλλειψη κυνισμού. Σε αυτή τη συλλογή ένα από τα κύρια θέματα είναι ο θάνατος και μου άρεσε πολύ η προσέγγισή της.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

With House of Light, Mary Oliver further explores her already extraordinary talent. As in her previous collection Dream Work, Oliver continues to write increasingly diffuse and personal lyrics, moving beyond the Pulitzer Prize winner American Primitive, which was a collection of perfect lyric episodes, each precisely balanced between the poet’s sharp eye and her loving heart.

Here, though. the two elements—the heart and the eye, each intensely present as before—have begun to merge. The heart is sharper, the eye more loving, the vision more unified. In House of Light, it is more difficult for me to pick out my favorite poems than it was in American Primitive or Dreamwork, but this is not because the individual lyrics lack finish or completeness, but because each one by itself seems an equally distilled expression of the vision and spirit of the Mary Oliver.

Oliver was in her middle fifties when she published this book, and here the intense power of life—always in her poems, soaring highest in her images of birds—is balanced by the vigorous implacability of death. The herons and the egrets and the terns are here, as always, but the poems I remember best from this book are the ones in which death arrives embodied, in the snake, but not only in the snake, but also in that plummeting predator, the one we call the night bird, the owl.

Here are a two poems from this collection, one about two snakes and one about a white owl:

LOOKING FOR SNAKES

Because it is good
to be afraid—
but not too afraid—
I walk carefully

on the slabby hill,
through laces of bracken,
through the thick, wild roses,
waiting for my heart

to fly up
out of the leaves
chilled
and singing,

and it does.
They’re there—
two of them,
in sleepy loops—

and they rise
in a spit of energy,
like dark stalks
among the wild, pink roses,

their mouths
narrow and stubborn,
their red eyes
staring.

To you shiver
at the mere mention
of their glossy,
shoulderless bodies!

I would like to bring you here.
I would like you to remember
the black flowers of their faces
as well as their quick slithering—

I would like you to remember
the pretty fire that dabs out of their mouths
as well as the plunge back into the shadows,
and the heart’s thudding song.



WHITE OWL FLIES INTO AND OUT OF THE FIELD

Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful,
and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings—
five feet apart—and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys
of the snow—

and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes,
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows—
so I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us—

as soft as feathers—
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow—
that is is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed
our of our bones.

[Nic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has soul.

[Ryan Schwartz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded to 4
This collection had some very striking and beautiful poems but overall it was just way too naturey for me

[Lillian Menkens-Weiler · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” classic outdoorsy girlie quote

[☀︎El In Oz☀︎ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

Nice poetry collection, but the poems in this one did not hit me as hard as some of her other collections unfortunately.

[Franchesca Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing— that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do."

[Christma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Oliver never disappoints. This one has some of my favorite lines in it.

[Laura Ge · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my god i think i finally get why people like poetry so much. this collection was just banger after banger.

favorites (in order-ish) were:
1. the ponds
2. roses, late summer
3. spring
4. the summer day
5. the deer
6. moccasin glowers