A Short Poem for Mary Oliver

 You taught me to write love poems to treesto fall in love with how they sway, to remembertheir dance on nights filled with spring andyou whispered of love, so  sacred and so purehow hands form unions bold enough to lastand how sorrow, although burdensome willalmost always return with light  In college, between the pages of a used book in one of my first writing classes, I met a woman whose poetry made my heart fill with hope that the power and minute simplicity of words will always carry with it, the weight to change, to calm,  and to soothe the aches of life. Mary Oliver is a woman with words in her bones and letters in heart and for that, I am grateful.Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that." - Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935- January 17, 2019) 

~ A