Mary Oliver

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

hope existence free verse joyful

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me - meaning Summary

Wonder Through Natural Connection

The poem imagines rain as a joyful visitor returning to earth, then expands that small event into a sense of connection. As the speaker stands beneath a tree after the storm, rain, leaves, stars, body, and tree seem joined in one living moment. Its final invitation suggests that attentive contact with the natural world can renew wonder and open the mind to future possibility.

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Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, to be happy again in a new way on the earth! That’s what it said as it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean into the branches and the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared. I was standing under a tree. The tree was a tree with happy leaves, and I was myself, and there were stars in the sky that were also themselves at the moment, at which moment my right hand was holding my left hand which was holding the tree which was filled with stars and the soft rain— imagine! imagine! the wild and wondrous journeys still to be ours.

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