mary oliver

I can not get enough of this poem. Different lines randomly pop up in my head at the oddest moments. I am reading Deepak Chopra's Soulmate (its kind of "meh" so far ... but I like it enough. There's some random well thought out points mentioned. I guess it seems full of simple, sweet ideas & thats what keeps me reading.). Someone dies in the book, so I automatically recall this line: Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. I dont really have a point to make. I just wanted to share the poem. I will probably post it over and over after I forget that I've already posted it. But Mary Oliver is a great poet and people should be required to read selected poems of hers (that I have chosen obviously) and read them repeatedly until they memorize two of them.

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.