I love Oliver's poems, too. Here's my favorite:

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.

There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.

Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.

Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Oh! We read Mary Oliver in my writing class all the time, and, in fact, my teacher used "The Journey" as sort of a theme threaded throughout the semester a year or two ago.

KristinT -- I meant to make that my tagline recently, and forgot. I found it on my writing teacher's business card for her massage therapy business.

Teppy - do you want to share? I can share. I can even give, to someone with a cu...I mean snazzy hairdo like yours. :)

Oh, thanks, sweetie! For now, I'm good with my current tag, since I had a luchadore move pulled on me last night.

More Oliver. This one makes me think of Susan, picking her "feralberries" for jam.

August

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

oh.

Those are lovely.

Someone, I can't recall who, posted Wild Geese quite a while ago and I used part of it as a tag. I want more. I'll have to request some Mary Oliver from the library.

Pro'ly me. Wild Geese has long been my favorite. I was using a line a week for my tag for awhile back-when.

Here's another:

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal -- a white fan
streaked with pink and violet
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire --
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

- Mary Oliver
House of Light, New and Selected Poems

I finished Prodigal Summer and loved it. The plot development I feared never materialized (thank you, Katrina Bee for the info that kept me going!), hooray! Much of the book is an ecology and biology lesson, but I liked how she did it, a lot. She was very gentle and persuasive. The author reads the books on tape version and I highly recommend it.

Now I’m listening to my first Agatha Raisin, which is actually the 10th in the series. The reader is fabulous, another good pairing of voice and material. The character is reminding me a lot of msbelle – endearing, irascible, clever, outspoken, uses the word “ginormous.” It's delightful.

I love all the Oliver poetry popping up here! Shiny!

I was at Borders tonight and saw a Bunnyzilla collection in the sale area. Jilli knows about this, yes? I figure she must, but thought I'd check.