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, (1935-2019) poet, Wild Geese
Carol Pearson reminds us that the first stanza of Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese is often quoted and she says she loves that too. “You do not have to be good. Your 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.”
She points to the second stanza that contains the phrase and says, “I love this because we all have to face our despair, talk about it, be supported and loved in our suffering, and not be in denial about it. It is such a gift to be on this earth with the people and to remember to not get so hung up with what isn’t working for us or what we still need to develop. Mary Oliver encourages us to open up to the beauty around us and that we are part of that beauty and it is announcing our place in the family of things, and that we’re all one on this planet. We can partake in that beauty and in that wildness and that goodness and joy.”
Carol Pearson, Ph.D. is the author of
Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within
