Mary Oliver Quotes about Morning

And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?

Mary Oliver

Inspirational, Beautiful, Morning

There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Mean, Night

Mary Oliver (2004). “Why I Wake Early: New Poems”, p.8, Beacon Press

Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety – best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching, to hold us in the great hands of light – good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Stars, Kindness

Mary Oliver (2004). “Why I Wake Early: New Poems”, p.3, Beacon Press

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Stars, Dark

Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.368, Penguin

Mornings at Blackwater" For years, every morning, I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks. And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen. So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Past, Years

Mary Oliver (2008). “Red Bird: Poems”, p.57, Beacon Press

Why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world?

Mary Oliver

Morning, Shining, World

Mary Oliver (2005). “New and Selected Poems, Volume Two”, Beacon Press (MA)

I do not live happily or comfortably With the cleverness of our times. The talk is all about computers, The news is all about bombs and blood. This morning, in the fresh field, I came upon a hidden nest. It held four warm, speckled eggs. I touched them. Then went away softly, Having felt something more wonderful Than all the electricity of New York City.

Mary Oliver

Morning, New York, Blood

Mary Oliver (2009). “Evidence: Poems”, p.40, Beacon Press

I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Moving, Lovely Voice

FaceBook post by Mary Oliver from Nov 07, 2014

Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Heart, Thinking

Mary Oliver (1986). “Dream Work”, p.68, Atlantic Monthly Press

All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing

Mary Oliver

Morning, Heart, Night

FaceBook post by Mary Oliver from Apr 22, 2015

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Writing, Thinking

"Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver". www.oprah.com. March 9, 2011.

Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.

Mary Oliver

Morning, Spring, Fall

Mary Oliver (2012). “A Thousand Mornings: Poems”, p.39, Penguin

Mary Oliver Quotes about Morning

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