Taylor Edwards’s Reviews > Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver > Status Update

To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

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.

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

Watching, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

From Six Recognitions of the Lord “Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with the fragrance of the field and the freshness of the oceans which you have made, and help me to hear and to hold in all dearness those exacting and wonderful words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying: Follow me.”

From Sometimes “Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

From It Was Early “Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed”

From Don’t Hesitate “…don’t be afraid of it’s plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb”