Right now (I say \u201cright now\u201d like this is a new find for me. It\u2019s not. Years and years ago, someone\u2019s psychiatrist suggested reading it, and that someone emailed it to me, and I cried for what felt like days because suddenly it was okay to feel things differently and still fit. I say \u201cright now\u201d because life has a way of circling you back to a place you\u2019ve been over and over and over again), \u201cWild Geese\u201d by Mary Oliver<\/a> is one of my heart songs.<\/p>\n (Secretly: the very very very last part doesn\u2019t quite work for me anymore, but the feeling of the poem as a whole is still so very raw and wet and real that I can\u2019t help but carry it around in my guts. \u201cThings\u201d is kind of half-assed but I don\u2019t know what would have been better.)<\/p>\n Wild Geese<\/strong><\/p>\n You do not have to be good.<\/p>\n You do not have to walk on your knees<\/p>\n for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.<\/p>\n You only have to let the soft animal of your body<\/p>\n love what it loves.<\/p>\n Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the world goes on.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain<\/p>\n are moving across the landscapes,<\/p>\n over the prairies and the deep trees,<\/p>\n the mountains and the rivers.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,<\/p>\n are heading home again.<\/p>\n Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,<\/p>\n the world offers itself to your imagination,<\/p>\n calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –<\/p>\n over and over announcing your place<\/p>\n in the family of things.<\/p>\n ~ Mary Oliver<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Margret Bollerup My Poetry Month Pick: “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver Photo Credit: Let Ideas Compete via Compfight cc Right now (I say \u201cright now\u201d like this is a new find for me. It\u2019s not. Years and years ago, someone\u2019s psychiatrist suggested reading it, and that someone emailed it to me, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"English](\"http:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/english\/files\/2015\/04\/English-blog-geese-300x201.jpg\")
<\/a> Photo Credit: Let Ideas Compete<\/a> via Compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n