Mary Oliver & Molly Malone Cook, Our World

“Things began to change after that. And we didn’t disdain restaurants, the exquisite and dainty and plentiful foods. But neither did we ever forget the pleasures of our simplicity, our so-called hard years. When work was play, and play so thoroughly entered our work. We did not forget the bread, the jam, the bayberry, the gull, whose injuries to wings and legs were not reversible, who spent his last two months with us, splashing in the bathtub each morning, preening himself in the sun, asking to be turned around so he could watch the sunset, then turned again, so he could gaze with us into the evening fire.”