The American poet Mary Jane Oliver has always found inspiration in nature. She was influenced by Thoreau and Walt Whitman.

Her favourite pastime was a solitary walk in the wild. 

She once said: “When things are going well, you know, the walk does not get rapid or get anywhere: I finally just stop and write. That's a successful walk!”

Once when she found herself walking in the woods with no pen, she was deeply disappointed.

She narrated her feelings in a very painful way and later hid pencils in the trees so she would never be stuck like that again.

She has said in an interview that she often carried a 3-by-5-inch hand-sewn notebook for recording impressions and phrases.

I took her poetry seriously when a friend based in Iowa gifted her book “New and Selected Poems” to me with a note that she has been declared as the best-selling poet in the United States.

Following poem “When Death Comes” is from the same book.

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 measles-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?

And therefore, I look upon everything 

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, 

and I look upon time as no more than an idea, 

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life 

as a flower, as common 

as a field daisy, 

and as singular,

and each name 

a comfortable music in the mouth, 

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, 

and something 

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life 

I was a bride married to amazement. 

I was the bridegroom, 

taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder 

if I have made of my life 

something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself 

sighing and frightened, 

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up 

simply having visited this world.