Wild Geese
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 your 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."
by Mary Oliver
Wild thoughts in my head are still trying to settle themselves into words. But this poem says something of what I feel. How I ache to love what I love, let go of what weighs me down and be free. I've searched for home my whole life and grown tired of trying to make myself stay in places that aren't. Something in me knows where I'm heading, it's moving me across landscapes and I know I will end up where I'm meant to be. There's a kind of peace in that for me; trusting in the natural order of things, how one season leads into another and soon the wild geese are heading home again.
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