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From Darius Simpson's book, Never Catch Me. (Button Poetry, 2022)

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From Sarah Kay's book, No Matter the Wreckage. (Write Bloody, 2014)

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From Diane Seuss's new book Modern Poetry, out today with Graywolf!

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Ordinary Life by Barbara Crooker

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~ Mary Oliver, Devotions

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~ Mary Oliver, Devotions poems

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“Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I’ll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let’s compare scintillation - let’s share starlight.”

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

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Blessing the Boats

by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back     may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that

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poems on simple and ordinary things

The Orange, Wendy Cope | Simple, Raymond Carver | Small Kindnesses, Danusha Laméris | The Patience of Ordinary Things, Pat Schneider | Mowing, Ada Limón | Oranges, Jean Little

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Pat Schneider, The Patience of Ordinary Things

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Instructions for the Journey  :: Pat Schneider

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~ Mary Oliver, (When I Am Among Trees poem from Devotions)

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I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about.

– Mary Oliver

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Invitation

by Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time to linger for just a little while out of your busy

and very important day for the goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles

for a musical battle, to see who can sing the highest note, or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth, or the most tender? Their strong, blunt beaks drink the air

as they strive melodiously not for your sake and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning but for sheer delight and gratitude– believe us, they say, it is a serious thing

just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world. I beg of you,

do not walk by without pausing to attend to this rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something. It could mean everything. It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote: You must change your life.

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Grace

The woods is shining this morning

Red, gold and green, the leaves

lie on the ground, or fall,

or hang full of light in the air still.

Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes

the place it has been coming to forever.

It has not hastened here, or lagged.

See how surely it has sought itself,

its roots passing lordly through the earth.

See how without confusion it is

all that it is, and how flawless

its grace is. Running or walking, the way

is the same. Be still. Be still.

- Wendell Berry

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Wendell Berry, “I. [After the bitter nights]”