West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another—why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places? Listen, listen, I’m forever saying, Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof, to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit— then I come up with a few words, like a gift.

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 believe in death. I believe it is the last wonderful work.

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

If you think daylight is just daylight then it is just daylight.

So I stood on the pale, peach-colored sand, watching the fox as it opened like a flower, and I began softly, to pick among the vast assortment of words that it should run again and again across the page that you again and again should shiver with praise.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come. Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine. Let the wind turn in the trees, and the mystery hidden in dirt swing through the air.

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me?