West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

Here in my head, language keeps making its tiny noises.

Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

I could not resolve anything long enough to become one thing except this: the imaginer.

This was the quick wrist of early summer, when everything was alive.

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together.

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?