Re-Selecting the Poems of Mary Oliver . (Originally published on this blog in 2013)

Today I stood in the Poetry section of Boulder Bookstore, closed my eyes, and randomly selected a book from which I randomly selected a page. The book was The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver and the poems were magnificent. She seems to be still alive.
I bought the book; it was even used! I've had good luck with selecting poetry books this way, I've tried a more orderly approach (i.e. only select female poets, or only Ann Sexton,  or whichever title is the catchest; but I am always disappointed).
 The poem I read first was "Two Kinds of Deliverance." The title alone piqued my interest, the poem was appropriately about Spring:

1

Last night the geese came back,

slanting fast

from the blossom of the rising moon down

to the black pond. A muskrat

swimming in the twilight saw them and hurried

to the secret lodges to tell everyone

spring had come.

And so it had.

By morning when I went out

the last of the ice had disappeared, blackbirds

sang on the shores. Every year

the geese, returning,

do this, I don’t

know how.

2

The curtains opened and there was

an old man in a headdress of feathers,

leather leggings and a vest made

from the skin of some animal. He danced

in a kind of surly rapture, and the trees

in the fields far away

began to mutter and suck up their long roots.

Slowly they advanced until they stood

pressed to the schoolhouse windows.

3

I don’t know

lots of things but I know this: next year

when spring

flows over the starting point I’ll think I’m going to

drown in the shimmering miles of it and then

one or two birds will fly me over

the threshold.

As for the pain

of others, of course it tries to be

abstract, but then

there flares up out of a vanished wilderness, like fire,

still blistering: the wrinkled face

of an old Chippewa

smiling, hating us,

dancing for his life.

There is another poem titled "When Death Comes." I suppose it is everyone else's favorite as well, since it wasn't hard to find in full here.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

I LOVE this poem. I am, however, not particularly curious about death. I don't really think anything unexpected will happen, aside from awestricken-ness of the eternal silence in that "cottage of darkness." I love how she thinks about time and eternality; I have written similar things, but much less eloquently.

Just for good measure, I will include another new favorite from Oliver, "Lightening":

The oaks shone

gaunt gold

on the lip

of the storm before

the wind rose,

the shapeless mouth

opened and began

its five-hour howl;

the lights

went out fast, branches

sidled over

the pitch of the roof, bounced

into the year

that grew black

within minutes, except

for the lightening - the landscape

bulging forth like a quick

lesson in creating, then

thudding away. Inside,

as always,

it was hard to tell

fear from excitement:

how sensual

the lightning’s

poured stroke! and still,

what a fire and a risk!

As always the body

wants to hide,

wants to flow toward it - strives

to balance while

fear shouts,

excitement shouts, back

and forth - each

bolt a burning river

tearing like escape through the dark

field of the other. 

UHH
  I won't say what it reminds me of, but I will say it's great she wrote this and that I have read it, so now I will not attempt to write some dribble trying to express the same sentiments.
There's one more of course, I like it for the personification of Lilies and their relationship to hummingbirds. Particularly "if I were a Lily/ I think I would wait all day / for the green face/ of the hummingbird/ to touch me."

Romanic, I guess.
Hmmmm.

Actually instead of quoting that one (you can read it here), There is Another.

Sunrise

You can

die for it --

an idea,

or the world. People

have done so,

brilliantly,

letting

their small bodies be bound

to the stake,

creating

an unforgettable

fury of light. But

this morning,

climbing the familiar hills

in the familiar

fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,

and India

and Europe, and I thought

how the sun

blazes

for everyone just

so joyfully

as it rises

under the lashes

of my own eyes, and I thought

I am so many!

What is my name?

What is the name

of the deep breath I would take

over and over

for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is

happiness, it is another one

of the ways to enter

fire.

I could just quote the entire book.