Of Love – Mary Oliver

I have fallen in love more times than one,

thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting

whether active or inactive. Sometimes

it was all but ephemeral, maybe only

an afternoon, but not less real for that.

They stay in my mind, these beautiful people

or anyway beautiful people to me, of which

there are so many. You, and you and you,

whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe

missed. Love, love, love, it was the

core of my life, from which, of course, comes

the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned

that some of them were men and some were women

and some — now carry my revelation with you —

were trees. Or places. Or music flying above

the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun

which was the first, and the best, the most

loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into

my eyes, every morning. So I imagine such

love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its

innocence and hunger to give of itself — I

imagine this is how it began.”

 

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1