But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple — or a green field — a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secon… - Mary Oliver

I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple — or a green field — a place to enter, and in which to feel.

The poem was made not just to exist, but to speak — to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was needed.

ANGELS You might see an angel anytime and anywhere. Of course you have to open your eyes to a kind of second level, but it’s not really hard. The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That’s a place you just can’t get into, not entirely anyway, other people’s heads. I’ll just leave you with this. I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance.

When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl.