The Sun (Monday Poem)

 by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone---

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

 

such wild love---

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

 

as you stand there,

empty-handed---

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

 

 

from Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, by Mary Oliver

Penguin Random House, 2017