A Thousand Mornings

by Mary Oliver

Have I lived enough? Have I loved enough? Have I considered Right Action enough, have I come to any conclusion? Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude? Have I endured loneliness with grace? I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it. Actually, I probably think too much.

And after the leaves came blossoms. For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.

knowing as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married to the vitality of what will be? I don’t say it’s easy, but what else will do

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition is the best for by evening you know that you at least have lived through another day) and let the disasters, the unbelievable yet approved decisions, soak in. I don’t need to name the countries, ours among them. What keeps us from falling down, our faces to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.