Dinesh's photos with the keyword: Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things. ~ Mary Oliver

.............. Just do what you do and don't worry, dipping branch by branch down to the fountain.... ~ Bird in the Pepper Tree ~ Mary Oliver

The crows see me. They stretch their glossy necks In the tallest branches Of green trees. I am Possibly dangerous, I am Entering the kingdom. The dream of my life Is to lie down by a slow river And stare at the light in the trees– To learn something by being nothing A little while but the rich Lens of attention. But the crows puff their feathers and cry Between me and the sun, And I should go now. They know me for what I am. No dreamer, No eater of leaves. ~"Entering the Kingdom" ~ Mary Oliver

Here is the endless wet thick cosmos, the center of everything—the nugget of dense sap, branching vines, the dark burred faintly belching bogs. Here is swamp, here is struggle, closure— pathless, seamless, peerless mud. My bones knock together at the pale joints, trying for foothold, fingerhold, mindhold over such slick crossings, deep hipholes, hummocks that sink silently into the black, slack earthsoup. I feel not wet so much as painted and glittered with the fat grassy mires, the rich and succulent marrows of earth— a poor dry stick given one more chance by the whims of swamp water— a bough that still, after all these years, could take root, sprout, branch out, bud— make of its life a breathing palace of leaves. ~ Mary Oliver

"Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.” ― Mary Oliver

Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.” ― Mary Oliver

In winter all the singing is in the tops of the trees where the wind-bird with its white eyes shoves and pushes among the branches. Like any of us he wants to go to sleep, but he's restless— he has an idea, and slowly it unfolds from under his beating wings as long as he stays awake. But his big, round music, after all, is too breathy to last. So, it's over. In the pine-crown he makes his nest, he's done all he can. I don't know the name of this bird, I only imagine his glittering beak tucked in a white wing while the clouds— which he has summoned from the north— which he has taught to be mild, and silent— thicken, and begin to fall into the world below like stars, or the feathers of some unimaginable bird that loves us, that is asleep now, and silent— that has turned itself into snow. ~ Mary Oliver

.................... spending my time, as the saying goes, watching until the watching turns into feeling, so that I feel I am myself a small bird with a terrible hunger, with a thin beak probing and dipping and a heart that races so fast it is only a heart beat ahead of breaking------ and I am the hunger and the assuagement, and also I am the leaves and the blossoms, and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking. Excerpt: "Summer Story" ~ Mary Oliver

..................................... still. I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled - to caste aside the weight of facts and may be even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing - that the light is everything - that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do. Excerpt: "The Ponds" ~ Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves, the uneaten fruits crumbling damply in the shadows, unmattering back from the particular island of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere except underfoot, moldering in that black subterranean castle of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds and the wanderings of water. This I try to remember when time's measure painfully chafes, for instance when autumn flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing to stay - how everything lives, shifting from one bright vision to another, forever in these momentary pastures. "Fall Song" ~ Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their orange flares; swaying in the wind, their congregations are a levitation of bright dust, of thin and lacy leaves. There isn't a place in this world that doesn't sooner or later drown in the indigos of darkness, but now, for a while, the roughage shines like a miracle as it floats above everything with its yellow hair. Of course nothing stops the cold, black, curved blade from hooking forward— of course loss is the great lesson. But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive. Inside the bright fields, touched by their rough and spongy gold, I am washed and washed in the river of earthly delight— and what are you going to do— what can you do about it— deep, blue night? ~ Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. ~ Mary Oliver

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened? "At Backwater Pond" - Mary Oliver

Traveling at thirty thousand feet, we see How much of earth still lies in wilderness Till terminals occur like miracles To civilize the paralyzing dark Buckled for landing to a tilting chair I think: if miracle or accident Should send us on across the upper air, How many miles, or nights, or years to go Before the mind, with its huge ego paling, Before the heart , all expectation spent, Should read the meaning of the scene below? But now already the loves ones gather Under the dome of welcome, as we glide Over the final jutting mountainside, Across the suburbs tangled in their lights, And settled softly on the earth once more Rise in the fierce assumption of our lives - Discarding smoothly, as we disembark, All thoughts that held us wiser for moment Up there alone, in the impartial dark. ~ Mary Oliver

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees, A quiet house, some green and modest acres A little way from every troubling town, A little way from factories, schools, laments, I would have time, I thought, and time to spare. With only streams and birds for company, To build out of my life a few wild stanzas. And then it came to me, that so was death A little way away from everywhere. There is a thing in me still dreams of trees, But let it go. Homesick for moderation, Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away. If any find solution, let him tell it. Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation Where, as the times implore our true involvement, The blades of every crisis point the way. I would it were not so, but so it is, Who ever made, music of a mild day? “A dream of trees” ~ Mary Oliver

It isn’t very far as highways lie. I might be back by nightfall, having seen The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water. Friends argue that I might be wiser for it. They do not hear the far-off Yankee whisper: How dull we grow from hurrying here and there! Many have gone, and think me half a fool To miss a day away in the cool country. Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish, Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are. “Going to Walden” ~ Mary Oliver

After rain after many days without rain, it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees, and the dampness there, married now to gravity, falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground where it will disappear — but not, of course, vanish except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share, and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss; a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel; and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years, will feel themselves being touched. "Lingering in happiness" ~ Mary Oliver