5 Mary Oliver Poems for Grieving Hearts
When you are in the middle of a dark grief of the soul, sometimes the most comforting thing you can feel is someone’s understanding. Someone who helps you feel seen and reminds you that you’re not alone in this season of loss.
Mary Oliver is a poet who understood grief all too well. Her words serve as a comfort to other hurting souls who are in the thick of their pain. If you are in a season of sadness, please know that I am aching alongside you. I hope her words can be a flicker of hope for your heart as well. Here are a few Mary Oliver poems to soothe our souls in any season of suffering.
Heavy
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It is not the weight you carry
but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled—
roses in the wind,
The sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
This poem was a beautiful tribute to the difficult process of grieving and the immense strength it takes to find joy in the most improbable times. It’s a poem of resilience and honest reflection that speaks so profoundly to the pain that surrounds loss.
The Uses of Sorrow
Someone I loved once
gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that
this, too, was a gift.
Grieving varies from person to person: it is not linear, and the timing for healing varies from situation to situation. But as we travel through the pain, with time, we will start to be able to see the beauty that can come from even our most heartbreaking seasons—the perseverance that can grow despite deep suffering.
Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
This poem spoke so profoundly to my heart. Grief can make you feel so alone and hopeless—but for many, prayer can connect you back to hope. Prayer allows you to seek comfort and solace outside of yourself. It doesn’t have to be perfect to matter, it just needs to be sincere and honest. That vulnerability opens up a door for healing and processing.
Starlings in Winter (excerpt)
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
Oliver’s poetry is the perfect balance of pain and hope. Her words are full of wisdom and the insight that she herself gleaned from her time in the valley of grief. But they are also an encouragement for every hurting heart to find things that are still worth fighting for.
In Blackwater Woods (excerpt)
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
This poem is immensely profound as it reflects on the human condition and the importance of loving others—and life itself—to the very depths of our soul. Life is fleeting, and every moment matters. Oliver’s words acknowledge that painful reality while also reminding readers that love, despite the pain, is worth it.
