To Daffodils

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

         You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

         Has not attain’d his noon.

                        Stay, stay,

                Until the hasting day

                        Has run

                But to the even-song;

And, having pray’d together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

         We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

         As you, or anything.

                        We die

                As your hours do, and dry

                        Away,

                Like to the summer’s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

Ne’er to be found again.

—

by Robert Herrick

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Night Herons

Some herons
were fishing
in the robes
of the night

at a low hour
of the water’s body
and the fish, I suppose,
were full

of fish happiness
in those transparent inches
even as, over and over,
the beaks jacked down

and the narrow
bodies were lifted
with every
quick sally,

and that was the end of them
as far as we know—
though, what do we know
except that death

is so everywhere and so entire—
pummeling and felling
or sometimes,
like this, appearing

through such a thin door—
one stab, and you’re through!
And what then?
Why, then it was almost morning,

and one by one
the birds
opened their wings
and flew.

— Mary Oliver

I Want —

I want children to play upon my grave.

Fragile kites let out on lines held in sticky hands,

Pockets weighty with throwing pebbles;

Ant-army marches across greenest grasses,

Knees drawn high and feet bare

to the first timid days of summer.

Childish voices, noisy and forgetful

of the solemn nature of

life, six feet below the living.