When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

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.

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? by Mary Oliver

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?
   
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
   
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!
   
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
    
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
       
Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.
   
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
  
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
      
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid! 
   
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
   
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night
   
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
      
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
   
While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
   
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
   
I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
   
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
     
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
       
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
   
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
   
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
   
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
   
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Quantum Leap - Michael Jackson

I looked for you in hill and dale
I sought for you beyond the pale
I searched for you in every nook and cranny
My probing was at times uncanny
But everywhere I looked I found
I was just going round and round
In every storm, in every gale
I could hear your silent tale

You appeared wherever I went
In every taste, in every scent
I thought I was in a trance
In every quiver I felt your dance
In every sight I saw your glance
You were there, as if by chance

Even so, I have faltered
Despite the fact, my life has altered
All my doubts were struggles in vain
Of judgments made in memories of pain
Only now, by letting go
I can bask in your glow
No matter where I stray or flow
I see the splendor of your show
In every drama I am the actor
In every experience the timeless factor

In every dealing, every deed
You are there, as the seed
I know now, for I have seen
What could have happened could have been
There is no need to try so hard
For in your sleeve you hold the card
For every fortune, every fame
The Kingdom's here for us to claim
In every fire, every hearth
There's a spark gives new birth

To all those songs never sung
All those longings in hearts still young
Beyond all hearing, beyond all seeing
In the core of your Being
Is a field that spans infinity
Unbounded pure is the embryo of divinity
If we could for one moment BE
In an instant we would see
A world where no one has suffered or toiled
Of pristine beauty never soiled
Of sparkling waters, singing skies
Of hills and valleys where no one dies

That enchanted garden, that wondrous place
Where we once frolicked in times of grace
In ourselves a little deep
In that junkyard in that heap
Beneath that mound of guilt and sorrow
Is the splendor of another tomorrow
If you still have promises to keep
Just take that plunge, take that leap.