Poetry Friday: Mary Oliver

I like to give the mornings to those first good thoughts.
— Mary Oliver

NPR interview with Mary Oliver.


If you crave summer beans after reading this poem, try this colorful salad from The First Mess, or slow cooked beans with anchovies from Food & Wine.

Beans Green and Yellow

By Mary Oliver 

In fall
it is mushrooms
gathered in dampness
under the pines;
in spring
I have known the taste of the lamb
full of milk
and spring grass;
today
it is beans green and yellow
and lettuce and basil
from my friend’s garden -
how calmly,
as though it were an ordinary thing,
we eat the blessed earth.

From Swan: Poems and Prose Poems