"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 your 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.

           

            I fell in love with this poem the very first time I read it last year.   Since then, I have revisited the poem on several occasions.  Her words are so beautiful.  Each time I read the poem, I feel comforted by Mary Oliver’s message.  She gently conveys the idea that we should give up our guilt, let go of our sins.  The universe is forgiving.  Despite the grief in our lives, we can all find comfort. 

This free verse poem uses such simple language, and yet it is packed with incredibly rich imagery.  I love her phraseologies “the soft animal of your body” and “the clear pebbles of the rain.”  She is able to communicate her emotion so elegantly in these metaphors.

I recently took note of this sentence as well: “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, /are heading home again.” At first, this line did not seem particularly significant to me, but with further contemplation, I recognized a complexity.  Although I am a mere dilettante in the avian field, I do know that wild geese do not always “fly home” in the same direction.  When it gets cold, birds fly southwards, and when it is warm, birds migrate northwards.  Mary Oliver does not define “home” for the birds; instead, she leaves their destination ambiguous.  This adds an interesting complexity to the overall meaning of the poem.  We might not know where home is, for ourselves or for the wild geese, and that is okay.  In fact, it is natural. We still have our place in “the family of things.”