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Nothing is Too Small to be Wondered About

Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.

Jun 09, 2026
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Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver

In the spirit of immersing myself deeper in the practice and studying of nature poetry,

I am embarking on a year-long writing journey with Mary Oliver, reading a single poem of hers each day and then writing one in response.

I’m bringing you along on the journey. Every Sunday, I share a Mary Oliver poem, one of mine I’ve written in response, along with a poetry prompt for you to write your own in conversation with her.

Each week, we will gather in the comments section and share our Mary Oliver inspired poetry with each other.

Photo by Donald Merrill on Unsplash

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Nothing Is Too Small Not To Be Wondered About
Mary Oliver

The cricket doesn’t wonder
if there’s a heaven
or, if there is, if there’s room for him.

It’s fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings.
If he can, he enters a house
through the tiniest crack under the door.
Then the house grows colder.

He sings slower and slower.
Then, nothing.

This must mean something, I don’t know what.
But certainly it doesn’t mean
he hasn’t been an excellent cricket
all his life.

© Mary Oliver
From Felicity, 2015
Published by Penguin Press 2017

Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash

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Nothing Too Small to be Wondered About
Ash Kilback, after Mary Oliver

One afternoon, while working
out in the garden I stopped to watch
an ant scurry frantically across the cement
pad of the garage with a limp green worm
hinged in between its jaws.

This proved to be a perilous task given
the worm was the same size as its own body
and everything else was an impending danger:
the sharp-edged wood chips, tree seeds like
shields of armour, and of course, the other ants
trying to steal the worm away.

Throughout the long journey from one side
of the garage to the other, it stopped to rest
multiple times and regain its grip on the worm,
I was fascinated and eager to witness its safe
return.

This may have been the most important task
of the ant's short life. I did not see it as a struggle
but rather what it had to endure, and there's
a lesson in that for all of us: what we are made
to survive and how we come out the other side.

This Week’s Prompt: In Every Life, There is a Lesson

This week, write a poem in response to Mary Oliver’s, Nothing is Too Small to be Wondered About, by turning your attention towards another form of life that is infinitesimally smaller than ours. Write about what you know, or what you don’t know about its life, and then find a way to weave in a universal lesson that can teach us all about living.

Come back to the comments on this post Sunday, June 14th and share your poem.

Photo by Leslie Cross on Unsplash

Wild Attention: A Poetry Reading in Celebration of Mary Oliver

Sunday, June 28th \| 7PM-8:30PM PST

Since I began sharing my Mary Oliver writing journey with you, there has been a wellspring of poetry written and a whole community of poets who have found each other through the wisdom and comfort of Mary’s work and the poems that have been inspired through it.

I’m excited to share that I’ll be hosting our first community gathering in celebration of our Dreamwork project to come together to read Mary Oliver poems and the ones we’ve written from our weekly prompts!