House of Light [Paperback]

This collection of poems by Mary Oliver once again invites the reader to step across the threshold of ordinary life into a world of natural and spiritual luminosity.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver, The Summer Day (one of the poems in this volume)

Winner of a 1991 Christopher Award

Winner of the 1991Boston GlobeLawrence L. Winship Book AwardSome Questions You Might Ask
Moccasin Flowers
The Buddha’s Last Instruction
Spring
Singapore
The Hermit Crab
Lilies
Wings
The Swan
The Kingfisher
Indonesia
“Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”
Turtle
The Deer
The Loon on Oak-Head Pond
What Is It?
Writing Poems
Some Herons
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard
The Gift
Pipefish
The Kookaburras
The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water
Death at a Great Distance
The Notebook
Praise
Looking for Snakes
Fish Bones
The Oak Tree at the Entrance to Blackwater Pond
Everything
Nature
Snake
The Ponds
The Summer Day
Serengeti
The Terns
Roses, Late Summer
Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh
Looking at a Book of van Gogh’s Paintings, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Foxes in Winter
How Turtles Come to Spend the Winter in the Aquarium, Then Are Flown South and Released Back Into the Sea
Crows
Maybe
Finches
White Owl Flies Into and Out of the FieldOliver's poems are thoroughly convincing--as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring.-The New York Times Book ReviewA private person by nature,Mary Oliver(1935–2019) gave very few interviews over the years. Instead, she preferred to let her work speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers. TheNew York Timesrecently acknowledged Mary Oliver as &l“7