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Poetry
Chaikhana
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About Mary OliverTimeline (1935 - ) |
![Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry, poetry, [TRADITION SUB2] poetry, poetry](images/OliverMar_sm.jpg) |
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Original Language |
Wild Geese
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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.
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the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
Winter here in Colorado... Look up and see "the wild geese, high in the clean blue air..." Ancient purpose lined up in chevrons across the winter sky. That eternal determination that marks our direction through the world, to be always "heading home again."
The geese continuously call out one to another, as we all do, "over and over announcing your place / in the family of things."
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Ivan
M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright ©
2002 - 2008 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or
publishers.
