"When I Am Among the Trees" When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they … - Mary Oliver

No, I mean really listen. Here's a
story, and you don't have to visit many
houses to find it. One person is talking,
the other one is not really listening.
someone can look like they are but they're
actually thinking about something they
want to say, or their minds are just
wandering. Or they're looking at that
little box people hold in their hands these
days. And people get discouraged, so they
quit trying. And the very quiet people,
you may have noticed, are often the sad
people.

The Sunflowers

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks, their dry spines

creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy

but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young — the important weather,

the wandering crows.
Don't be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,

which follows the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds — each one a new life! — hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.

"It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning — it'll be gone."

[Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver (O Magazine, March 2011)]