How poetry can trim so close to the bone the essential truth of what we wish...

[riotheclown]

Excerpt from a poem by Mary Oliver Click on her name to see the whole poem.

I wanted

the past to go away, I wanted

to leave it, like another country; I wanted

my life to close, and open

like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song

where it falls

down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;

I wanted

to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was



alive

for a little while.

(…)

You don’t want to hear the story


of my life, and anyway


I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.


mary oliver