You Do Not Have to be Good

In honor of Friday poetry blogging, I give you the poem that has saved Ms. P and I more than once.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

           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.

Comments

[Susan]

I love this poem--I was reading it often earlier this month, in fact. It's a soothing message at the end of a long week.