When I Am Among the Trees
by Mary Oliver
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again,
"It’s simple," they say,
"and you too have come into the world to do this,
to go easy,
to be filled with light, and to shine."
Mary Oliver lived as if the world itself was a poem waiting to be read slowly. Born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio, she found solace early in the woods, wandering far from a turbulent home into the quiet company of wildflowers, crows, and ancient trees. She was not a poet who needed the noise of cities or acclaim of crowded rooms. Her greatest cathedral was the forest, her truest scriptures written in birdsong and wind.
Much of her adult life was spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where coastal light and inland shadows danced between tree limbs. There she lived with her partner, the photographer Molly Malone Cook, whose presence was both compass and mirror. Together they created a world where looking was sacred work, and where love was threaded into every walk, every hush, every line written by hand.
Oliver's days followed the rhythm of steps, not clocks. She walked daily—sometimes for hours—through woods and along shorelines, her notebook always near. Her poems were not constructed; they were gathered. And what she gathered was often luminous in its simplicity: a heron lifting from a marsh, a fox pausing at the edge of vision, a shaft of light falling like benediction through the pine boughs.
"When I Am Among the Trees" distills this life of communion into one of her most resonant meditations. It begins not with an idea, but with presence—trees named with intimacy: willow, honey locust, beech, oak, pine. These are not metaphors. They are neighbors. They are kin. In their company, Oliver remembers herself. She is not explaining nature; she is being returned by it.
The trees, in her view, are not decorative—they are participatory. They breathe, they stir, they call to us. They offer a stillness that is not empty but instructive. She writes that "the light flows from their branches," and this is not mere poetic flourish. For Oliver, the light was literal and sacred, refracting off bark, caught in the trembling lace of leaves. It was meditation in motion: watching that light, letting it wash over her, she learned to listen.
She often spoke of how light changes everything. Morning light with its promise, afternoon light with its warmth, and evening light—gentle and blue—calling us to rest. Observing these phases was, for her, a practice in attention, which she called the beginning of devotion. To stand beneath a tree and watch the sunlight dapple the forest floor was to be reminded that clarity and stillness are always available, if we will only look up.
Oliver's life was not flashy. She was private, almost reclusive. But in her quiet, she became a channel for what so many people longed to hear: that life, even at its most ordinary, is worth bowing to. Her poems rarely celebrated human triumph. They celebrated presence. And perhaps nowhere more deeply than in this poem, where trees whisper, "Stay awhile."
She did stay awhile. She stayed with the light as it changed throughout the day, with the trees as they bent and creaked and held their ground. She stayed long enough to recognize their wisdom and write it down for the rest of us. And in that staying, she cultivated a way of seeing that was devotional without being dogmatic.
Her invitation was gentle: Go easy. Be filled with light. Shine.
In a world constantly urging us to hurry, to climb, to prove, Oliver's work feels like stepping into a clearing. There, the air is fragrant with pine. The light is golden and quiet. And we remember, as she did, that there is a kind of salvation in simply being alive and aware.
Mary Oliver passed away in 2019, but her words remain rooted in the earth. They rise with the sap. They bend with the breeze. And most of all, they shine—with the same unassuming radiance she found among the trees.
Keywords:
Mary Oliver biography, When I Am Among the Trees poem, Mary Oliver nature poetry, poems about trees and light, meditative nature poem, spiritual poetry, mindfulness and nature, Mary Oliver life story, poetry as meditation, forest light poem
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