Poetry in Ordinary Time: Mary Oliver - Part 3

This is the third of four parts -- poetry for your reflection, written by Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, Mary Oliver, who died in January at age 83.  Today's reflection consists of the third and fourth sections of her seven-section poem, At the River Clarion.*

Photo: a stretch of the Clarion River 
that runs through Cook Forest Park.
Photographer: Zack (Zach) Zrudisin

At the River Clarion

3. 

Of course for each of us, there is daily life.
Let us live it, gesture by gesture.
When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?
And should we not thank the knife also?
We do not live in a simple world.

4.

There was someone I loved who grew old and ill.
One by one I watched the fires go out.
There was nothing I could do.

except to remember 
that we receive
then we give back.


*From Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, Penguin Press, New York, 2017.


If you missed the second part, you can read it HERE; it has a link back to the first part of this series.