Wild Geese

Randomly surfing the web, I chanced upon a poem by Rumi, which reminded me of a collection of poems I had saved during those late nights, in the time between graduation and finding a job during the last recession. I looked through them again, all 40 pages of it.

The selection was dominated by Mary Oliver's poems, which I enjoy for their simplicity and the use of nature as a theme. While I am named after the wild goose, I also named my blog as such because of a poem by Mary Oliver. I particularly love the fourth line. Here's the poem:



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.