Five More Minutes With Poet Mary Oliver

Written by Braiden Rex-Johnson on May 13, 2013

Inspiring moment clouds sunburst photo

This poem was written by Mary Oliver, a National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose work we have featured not once, but twice before on the Five More Minutes With website.

Here is another favorite: Look and See, from her collection entitled, “Why I Wake Early.”

 

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew

to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back

of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.

The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was

laughing.

This afternoon a gull sailing over

our house was casually scratching

its stomach of white feathers with one

pink foot as it flew.

Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we

only look, and see.

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