Mary Oliver Poems Every Nanny Should Know
Wild Geese
“You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove 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 rainare 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 placein the family of things.”― Mary Oliver
The Journey
One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around youkept shoutingtheir bad advice – – –though the whole housebegan to trembleand you felt the old tugat your ankles.‘Mend my life!’each voice cried.But you didn’t stop.You knew what you had to do,though the wind priedwith its stiff fingersat the very foundations – – –though their melancholywas terrible. It was already lateenough, and a wild night,and the road full of fallenbranches and stones.But little by little,as you left their voices behind,the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voice,which you slowlyrecognized as your own,that kept you companyas you strode deeper and deeperinto the world,determined to dothe only thing you could do – – – determined to savethe only life you could save. - Mary Oliver
“I tell you thisto break your heart,by which I mean onlythat it break open and never close againto the rest of the world.”- Mary Oliver
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. - Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purseto buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death comeslike the measle-poxwhen death comeslike 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 everythingas 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 commonas 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 somethingprecious to the earth.When it's over, I want to say all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.When it's over, I don't want to wonderif 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.--Mary Oliver
