In honor of Mary Oliver’s birthday this weekend, a selection from A Thousand Mornings: Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, […]
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver It’s easy to breeze right by the most astonishing things. A hawk circling overhead. A couple that has found one another. A caterpillar slinky-ing up a leaf. A bridge that spans a river. A newborn of […]
Years ago, I was in the middle of a complicated business trip, rushing for a connection in a big airport in a town where I knew no one. As I was shuffling along the moving walkway, willing the standers in front of me to lean out of the way so I could rush by, […]
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. – Mary Oliver It’s a funny phrase, and apt: we don’t make attention, or do attention, we pay attention. It often feels like a cost. When we are called to pay attention, it’s because our focus is elsewhere. Pay attention to the algebra […]
Don’t just do something, stand there! Jack Bogle Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Mary Oliver This was a tough week for loss – both the poet Mary Oliver and the investor Jack Bogle. At first glance these seem like people who had little in common: Oliver spent her days in the […]
Pay Attention. Be Astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver, Instructions for Living a Life Dear Honeybees, I’ve been unplugged this past week, which brought all sorts of attention and astonishment. There will be lots to tell in weeks and months and years ahead; for now, here is a tiny morning video […]
Life has such surprising left hooks sometimes, which is one reason I love the poetry of Mary Oliver. Here we are, strolling in a field, mooning over a glorious grasshopper, and then POW! She asks, Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Much as it stings, it is the POW that makes the […]
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? Mary Oliver’s new collection Upstream has sent me spiraling back through her prior work. Fans will know the line above at a glance – it is from the stellar Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches, pasted in entirety below, with all […]