Mary Oliver (1935–2019)
Logos
Why worry about the loaves and fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.
Mary Jane Oliver (1935–2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award (1992) and the Pulitzer Prize (1984). This poem can be found in Oliver’s collection Devotions (Penguin, 2017).
Selected by Amy Frykholm: amy@journeywithjesus.net

