Mary-Oliver on deep ecology

Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention.

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Instructions for living a life: / Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?

The world offers itself to your imagination

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The world offers itself to your imagination.

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

You do not have to be good...

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. / You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.

Profile: Mary Oliver

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was an American poet whose accessible nature poetry examined attention to the natural world. Her work invited readers to observe closely the ordinary aspects of nature - grasshoppers, bears, wild geese. She suggested that sustained attention to nature can cultivate direct experience of interconnection.

Oliver’s poetry presented birds, flowers, trees, and animals as subjects that reveal patterns of existence. Her question “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” from “The Summer Day” has become widely known. She proposed that humans are participants in natural processes rather than separate observers.

quote-this-is-the-first-wildest-and-wisest-thing-I-know -mary-oliver

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“This is the first, wildest and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness” - Mary Oliver