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 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

Thanks to the lovely Nym for passing on the poem. And, oddly, for encouraging happy silence and reflection by forbidding speech, which would often frustrate me otherwise.