Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--Mary Oliver
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4 comments:
ME TOO
The Poetry ATTRA read it in the Walker Recital Hall, when they were teaching us to be a good audience and etiquette and blah, and it wasn't until I went home and found this piece in a book and read it that I remembered she'd read it.
That's so cool. I had a similar experience, except it was Gary...Olds or whatever his name is and it was that poem about his son's scrotum in the bath and Brendan's brother was reading it in the car IN FRONT OF HIS MOTHER IT WAS HORRIBLE okay it wasn't similar at all
also read more Mary Oliver. Her even more imagery-focused work (if that's possible) is exxxxxxcellent.
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