A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver Read Free Book Online

HUM, HUM
    1.
    One summer afternoon I heard
    a looming, mysterious hum
    high in the air; then came something
    like a small planet flying past—
    something
    not at all interested in me but on its own
    way somewhere, all anointed with excitement:
    bees, swarming,
    not to be held back.
    Nothing could hold them back.
    2.
    Gannets diving.
    Black snake wrapped in a tree, our eyes
    meeting.
    The grass singing
    as it sipped up the summer rain.
    The owl in the darkness, that good darkness
    under the stars.
    The child that was myself, that kept running away
    to the also running creek,
    to colt’s foot and trilliams,
    to the effortless prattle of the birds.
    3. SAID THE MOTHER
    You are going to grow up
    and in order for that to happen
    I am going to have to grow old
    and then I will die, and the blame
    will be yours.
    4. OF THE FATHER
    He wanted a body
    so he took mine.
    Some wounds never vanish.
    Yet little by little
    I learned to love my life.
    Though sometimes I had to run hard—
    especially from melancholy—
    not to be held back.
    5.
    I think there ought to be
    a little music here:
    hum, hum.
    6.
    The resurrection of the morning.
    The mystery of the night.
    The hummingbird’s wings.
    The excitement of thunder.
    The rainbow in the waterfall.
    Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.
    The mockingbird, replaying the songs of his
    neighbors.
    The bluebird with its unambitious warble
    simple yet sufficient.
    The shining fish. The beak of the crow.
    The new colt who came to me and leaned
    against the fence
    that I might put my hands upon his warm body
    and know no fear.
    Also the words of poets
    a hundred or hundreds of years dead—
    their words that would not be held back.
    7.
    Oh the house of denial has thick walls
    and very small windows
    and whoever lives there, little by little,
    will turn to stone.
    In those years I did everything I could do
    and I did it in the dark—
    I mean, without understanding.
    I ran away.
    I ran away again.
    Then, again, I ran away.
    They were awfully little, those bees,
    and maybe frightened,
    yet unstoppably they flew on, somewhere,
    to live their life.
     
    Hum, hum, hum.

I HAVE DECIDED
    I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.
    Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.
    Are you following me?

WAS IT NECESSARY TO DO IT?
    I tell you that ant is very alive!
    Look at how he fusses at being stepped on.

GREEN, GREEN IS MY SISTER’S HOUSE
    Don’t you dare climb that tree
    or even try, they said, or you will be
    sent away to the hospital of the
    very foolish, if not the other one.
    And I suppose, considering my age,
    it was fair advice.
    But the tree is a sister to me, she
    lives alone in a green cottage
    high in the air and I know what
    would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
    she’d shake her green hair, she’d
    welcome me. Truly
    I try to be good but sometimes
    a person just has to break out and
    act like the wild and springy thing
    one used to be. It’s impossible not
    to remember
wild
and want it back. So
    if someday you can’t find me you might
    look into that tree or—of course
    it’s possible—under it.

THE INSTANT
    Today
    one small snake lay, looped and
    solitary
    in the high grass, it
    swirled to look, didn’t
    like what it saw
    and was gone
    in two pulses
    forward and with no sound at all, only
    two taps, in disarray, from
    that other shy one,
    my heart.

THE WAY OF THE WORLD
    The chickens ate all the crickets.
    The foxes ate all the chickens.
    This morning a friend hauled his
    boat to shore and gave me the most
    wondrous fish. In its silver scales
    it seemed dressed for a wedding.
    The gills were pulsing, just above
    where shoulders would be, if it