She has left us so much . . .
Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
by Mary Oliver
![Mary Oliver](https://www.best-poems.net/files/imagecache/poet/category_pictures/Mary%20Oliver.jpg "Mary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, [America's] best-selling poet. Oliver’s first collection of poems, No Voyage and Other Poems, was published in 1963, when she was 28. During the early 1980s, Oliver taught at Case Western Reserve University. Her fifth collection of poetry, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. This is a little selection of her best and famous poems.")
Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
7 comments:
Vicki, I didn't know she had died. Thank you so much for this post, and the beautiful poem of hers that you have selected. I love her work so much.
Such touching pictures and feelings from this woman, which is too little praise from me where more is deserved.
I will definitely look into her poems.
Sad for us, we who have been blessed by the images her words called forth. Glad that the world had her spirit for a while.
I’ve never been much of a poetry reader. But that all changed with Mary Oliver. When I heard yesterday that she had died, my heart ached. But as you say, she has left us so much and all the more reason to cherish it today.
One of my favorites...her words will never die. Funny, I thought she's live on an on. I was quite surprised that she died---at her home in Florida? She should have been by a pond near Provincetown.
Therese -- I think you would really enjoy them
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