I love it that Valerie’s Fresh Morning post this morning was a Mary Oliver poem, because I’ve been rolling one of those around my brain almost constantly this past week. Blog sistah, you and I are on the same wavelength!
Enjoy this gorgeous poem from Ms. Oliver, who I just learned lives in Provincetown, MA, the Cape Cod “land’s end” town that is very close to my favorite place on earth and has been home to so much artistic genius over the decades.
“The soft animal of your body.” Love that.
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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