Image Courtesy Of Penguin Press

Image courtesy of Penguin Press

Beloved poet Mary Oliver has died at 83. Lynn Neary’s lovely remembrance is here.

And here’s her poem “When Death Comes”

When Death Comes

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox;

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

She will be sorely missed

– Petra

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i think the most wholesome prank i ever pulled was with a friend who had a polaroid camera and we were out one evening walking around the neighbourhood and this one neighbour had a garden gnome and we kidnapped him for the evening and took a bunch of polaroids of his wild night out: gnome on the swing set, gnome climbing a tree, gnome laying down next to an empty bottle of vodka, gnome just causing an absolute ruckus and then we took all the pictures and put them in a little see-through food storage bag to keep them dry and put them under the gnome who we left on the doorstep of the house we got him from

anyway a few nights later we walked past again and wondered if the photos had been found and what the person must have thought and then we saw the gnome in pride of place balanced on the window ledge, and stuck to the inside of the window behind him were the polaroids with a sign saying “The Boy On Tour”

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