Mary Oliver 05.31.07

The Sun
~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 seas,
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 a 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
turned from this world

or have you too
gone crazy
for power
for things?

This poem by Mary Oliver is by far my favorite that we have read the entire quarter.

The way she describes the rising and setting of the sun creates such a beautiful and vivid image. Words such as "floats" and "slides" describes the "relaxed and easy" movement of the sun every night and every morning.

In the fourth stanza, she plays with the colors of the sun rise comparing the sun to a red flower. This red flower is set against the blackness of every morning. This contrast of red and black again gave me such a vivid description of the sun rising.

In the sixth stanza Mary Oliver describes this love that she has for the sun. She asks if there is a word anywhere "billowing enough" to describe the pleasure you get from watching the sun. The use of the word billowing gives you the impression of a word not being able to contain the
amount of pleasure the sun seems to fill you with.

At the end of the poem, she almost poses a question to the reader, asking if you are able to sit there and enjoy the beauty and majesty of the sun without being able to hold it in your hand? She asks "have you too gone crazy for power, for things?"