It’s hard to decide which Mary Oliver poem is my favorite. There are so many! But this one’s a strong candidate.

Every wisdom tradition I know urges us to cultivate active awareness of our mortality — because keeping that simple reality before our eyes enhances our appreciation of life, even when things get tough. It also increases the odds that we will come to some new resolve about how we want to live.

For example, how might things change if more of us regarded every person as “a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth”? Closer to home, what might happen for me and others if I myself held everyone I met in such respectful regard?

As you read this poem, ask yourself a simple question and take some time to ponder it: “How, then, shall I live?”

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

(Excerpted from New and Selected Poems: Volume One. Read more here.)