Penny Mayes
Creative Commons
“I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
Introduction by Anna Daniels
SDFP readers submitted more requests for Mary Oliver’s poetry than any other poet. Oliver’s unique form of poetic consciousness blurs the boundaries that separate the human from the natural world. “At its most intense, her poetry aims to peer beneath the constructions of culture and reason that burden us with an alienated consciousness to celebrate the primitive, mystical visions that reveal ‘a mossy darkness – / a dream that would never breathe air / and was hinged to your wildest joy / like a shadow.'”
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
Anna Daniels
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Wonderful poem! Thanks Anna, for the gift of poetry you’ve been providing lately! We can never have too much poetry. I especially like this one.
Death can be so easy. I think the dominant culture’s inability to come to grips with death is one of its most profound ailments. This poem offers a strong way to face it.