Happy Day, Writer Friends! I hope you’re all working on fabulous manuscripts, or revising glorious poems, or at least eating good, dark Swiss chocolate — something, anything writerly — to start off your week.

As it is World Poetry Day, I would like to share a poem by one of my favorites, Mary Oliver. I bought her New and Selected Poems: Volume One (now there’s a memorable title for you) in New York last week, and I’ve been reading it every night.

“How does she know?” I keep wondering. How does she find the words for that desire that’s been pulling at me for days, months, years? Poets are my superheroes.

What is it Robert Frost said? Anyone can get themselves into a poem, but it takes a poet to get out of one. Something like that.

Enjoy.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver. Online Source