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.

Sitting with this poem

I have so much to be thankful for. I am a caretaker, a guardian, a mother, a sister, a wife, a developer, a writer, and an artist. The responsibility I hold for others, my parent, my sibling, my family, is immense and constant. Oliver’s opening lines, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting,” speaks directly to someone like me who gives enormously and may sometimes wonders if it is ever enough.

I am also a creative soul living a very very practical life. As a technologist, developer, writer, and artist, I feel the tension between the demands of daily life and the need for creative expression and inner freedom. This poem gives us permission to honor both, to let “the soft animal of your body love what it loves” without guilt.

I understand loneliness even in a full life. A life as full as mine most days can still hold quiet moments of isolation. Caring for aging and disabled loved ones, the particular solitude of creative and technical work, the invisible labor of holding everything together. Oliver sees that and says “no matter how lonely” we are still claimed, still belonging.

I notice the natural world. Living where and how I do in Minnesota, I have a real and personal relationship with nature, seasons, sky, and land. Oliver’s imagery is not decorative to me. It is somehow very grounding. The geese are real to me.

But maybe just maybe the deepest reason this poem touches me is that the poem tells us that we already belong. Not because of what we do or how well we do it, but simply because we are here. For souls like me, today that is a profound and necessary thing to hear.

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