May, and among the miles of leafing, blossoms storm out of the darkness-windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees dive into them and I too, to gather their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs is the deepest certainty that this existence too this sense of well-being, the flourishing of the physical body—rides near the hub of the miracle that everything is a part of, is as good as a poem or a prayer, can also make luminous any dark place on earth.

Mary Oliver, from "May"

April 30, 2024: A Valentine for Ernest Mann, Naomi Shihab Nye

A Valentine for Ernest Mann Naomi Shihab Nye

You can't order a poem like you order a taco. Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two" and expect it to be handed back to you on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit. Anyone who says, "Here's my address, write me a poem," deserves something in reply. So I'll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife two skunks for a valentine. He couldn't understand why she was crying. "I thought they had such beautiful eyes." And he was serious. He was a serious man who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly just because the world said so. He really liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them as valentines and they became beautiful. At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding in the eyes of the skunks for centuries crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite. And let me know.

--

Today in:

2023: Oral History of Insatiability, Jason Myers 2022: Try to Praise the Mutilated World, Adam Zagajewski 2021: In Defense of a Long Engagement, Mairead Small Staid 2020: Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, Mary Oliver 2019: Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver 2018: Born Yesterday, Philip Larkin 2017: Thus, He Spoke His Quietus, Thomas Lux 2016: Trees, W.S. Merwin 2015: Today and Two Thousand Years from Now, Philip Levine 2014: from For a Long Time I Have Wanted to Write a Happy Poem, Richard Jackson 2013: Tear It Down, Jack Gilbert 2012:from An Atlas of the Difficult World, Adrienne Rich 2011: Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye 2010: from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman 2009: from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 2008: from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot 2007: Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot 2006: Preludes, T.S. Eliot 2005: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot

Aaaaand that's a wrap on year 20 (!?!) of our NaPoMo celebration. Thank you for the input & sweet comments about the future of this project. For now, we'll be sticking with the current format -- daily poems for one month out of the year -- so stay tuned for next April.

Until then, you can: + Visit a random poem from the archives. + Browse poems by topic / theme.

Thanks for all your enthusiasm, poetry posse! See you in 2025.

<3, Martha

I want the soft animal of Evan Buckley's body to love what it loves. That is truly all I want in life.

Worried I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it? Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better? Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows can do it and I am, well, hopeless. Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia? Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.

Mary Oliver

i just fulfilled my top sexual fantasy that i didn't think i would ever even tell anyone about. after months of fear and anxiety and my girlfriend coaxing me through it. the world is so vast and beautiful or whatever like mary oliver said

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 riverbed, 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, sleeping in the forest)

Mary Oliver, from "We Should Be Well Prepared", Red Bird

shoutout to whatever staff member has this bumper sticker at my school

— Mary Oliver, The Pond

I've Endured, Now What?

Blue Iris - Mary Oliver / So This Is All I Will Ever Be? - Fatima Aamer Bilal / Vive, Vive - Traci Brimhall

Mary Oliver, from Long Life: Essays And Other Writings originally published in 2004

Mary Oliver, from “Summer Morning.” [ID in alt text]

still. after all of it. mostly, i want to be kind

{Words by Charles Bukowski/ Mary Oliver from invitation}

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

i am too in love with life, i don't want to die (i cannot fathom the absence of living)

arthoesunshine | sunlightafterdark | joseph cambell | mary oliver | amy krouse rosenthal | joseph brodsky | unknown | gregory orr | colette, tr by matthew ward | anaïs nin