Poem

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.

This poem has long had great meaning to me. Allowing me to see my belonging in a broader way. Who do I belong to has always been my question as an adoptee. When I began to embrace the idea that I belonged to the universe and was embraced by the natural order of things there grew in me a sense of myself and the dropping of the tethers that kept me in a state of nonattachment. I share these words by Mary Oliver hoping that they will touch you as well.