Some Things The World Gave

Portrait of Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver 1935–2019

1 Times in the morning early when it rained and the long gray buildings came forward from darkness offering their windows for light.

2 Evenings out there on the plains when sunset donated farms that yearned so far to the west that the world centered there and bowed down.

3 A teacher at a country school walking home past a great marsh where ducks came gliding in -- she saw the boy out hunting and waved.

4 Silence on a hill where the path ended and then the forest below moving in one long whisper as evening touched the leaves.

5 Shelter in winter that day -- a storm coming, but in the lee of an island in a cover with friends -- oh, little bright cup of sun.

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