Mary Oliver

A Thousand Mornings

existence free verse reflective

A Thousand Mornings - meaning Summary

The Sea Within Us

The poem uses the sea as a plain comparison for human emotional life. Its shifts between calmness, generosity, violence, and persuasion suggest that people, too, contain conflicting moods and capacities. The speaker includes herself and the reader in this likeness, ending on a shared recognition: changeability is not exceptional but part of being human.

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The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts and withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

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