Mary Oliver

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It's the birthday of one of the best-selling poets in America Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935). She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, for her collection American Primitive (1983), and she's one of the best-selling American poets, but she's a very private person who rarely gives interviews. Oliver's most recent book is A Thousand Mornings(2013), and her upcoming book Dog Songs (2013) will be released this October.

The Morning

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver 

Mary Oliver once wrote: "Every day I walk out into the world to be dazzled, then to be reflective."

Stargazer (summer lily)

I enjoy the simplicity of Oliver's work that focuses on her experiences with nature's beauty and its creatures. 

This is a link to some of her poems  http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/MaryOliver.html

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