PROMPTS FROM MARY OLIVER'S POETRY * assorted lines from assorted poems, some slightly adjusted to suit a roleplay format, adjust as necessary
you do not have to be good.
ordinarily, i go to the woods alone.
when i am alone i can become invisible.
if you have ever gone to the woods with me, i must love you very much.
have you too gone crazy for power, for things?
have you too turned from this world?
do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough for the pleasure that fills you as the sun reaches out?
do they love their life?
don't worry, i'll bring you back, and i do.
i refuse to think to such a conclusion.
too terrible it would be, to be wrong.
in the night, i heard a sound outside the door.
would it be friendly too?
i stepped outside. it was gone.
one day you finally knew what you had to do.
you didn't stop.
trees, i think, are the most beautiful forms on the earth.
oh, i could not have said it better.
do you have time to linger for just a little while?
see who can sing the highest note.
believe us, they say.
it is a serious thing just to be alive.
i beg of you, do not walk by without pausing.
it could mean something.
it could mean everything.
you must change your life.
someone i loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
it took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine.
whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.
what's it going to be like?
you watch, and you try, but you simply can't imagine how they do it.
they are full of gorgeous life.
ah, what lessons you prepare for us.
i am thinking now of grief, 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 look upon time as no more than an idea.
when it's over, i want to say all my life i was a bride married to amazement.
we all know how that one goes, don't we?
i wanted to be able to love.
you don't want to hear the story of my life, and anyway i don't want to tell it.
it's the same old story, a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive.
did you feel it in your heart?
have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
have you changed your life?
did you see it, finally, just under the clouds?
some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing kept flickering in with the tide.
you know what a smile means, don't you?
i wanted the past to go away.
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 wanted to leave it, like another country.
i wanted to hurry into the work of my life.
i was alive for a little while.
mostly, i want to be kind.
nobody, of course, is kind or mean for a simple reason.
if they don't waste time looking for an easier world, they can do it.
i want to be improbable, beautiful, and afraid of nothing as though i had wings.
who made the world?
i don't know exactly what a prayer is.
i do know how to pay attention.
tell me, what else should i have done?
doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.
this isn't a contest, but the doorway into thanks.
just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate.
i suppose that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn.
of course, i could be wrong.
it is heaven itself to take what is given, to see what is plain.
what do i know?
there is a thing in me that dreamed of trees.
i would have time, i thought, and time to spare.
then it came to me.
