Day 28: Poetry
I started developing a healthy appreciation for poetry during my adolescent years in India...thank you Madam Phatania and Siri Akal Singh. Throughout my life various housemates, parents, children, best friends have all written poetry. It is such an incredibly powerful medium. I realize it's not for everyone...but bear with me for just one read. A dear friend forwarded me this poem written by Mary Oliver yesterday, and it has been lingering with me throughout the day today. I love, love, love this piece. Read it and I think you'll see why. What say you?
From New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St, Boston, MA 02108-2892, ISBN 0 870 6819 5). to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: And therefore I look upon everything and I think of each life as a flower, as common and each name a comfortable music in the mouth and each body a lion of courage, and something When it's over, I want to say: all my life When it is over, I don't want to wonder I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.When Death Comes
Mary OliverWhen death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
when death comes
like the measles-pox;
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
as a field daisy, and as singular,
tending as all music does, toward silence,
precious to the earth.
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.