A Thousand Mornings

by Mary Oliver

THE GARDENER 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. Then I step out into the garden, where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man, is tending his children, the roses.

I am so glad to be alive, I am so glad to be loving and loved.

as though his subject now was his true self, which of course was as dark and secret as anyone else’s, and it was too hard— perhaps you understand— to speak or to sing it to anything or anyone but the sky.

You are going to grow up and in order for that to happen I am going to have to grow old and then I will die, and the blame will be yours.

For he was an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.

I can’t say much more, except that it all happened in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt like the bliss of a certainty and a life lived in accordance with that certainty.