“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.

there are more than words
that graze the fertile fields
of my heart...it is a living thing.

for it's harvest I wait, as a morning glory,
to become entangled much as a bird
entangles itself within the wind.

express to me what you feel,
hide it among the blossoms of the vine.
Patience rises, to the sun, to bloom.

it has long been barren, what I can
feel inside, deeply seeded in aloneness,
and spring is the wish I sing of you.

but there are more than words...
so much more that remains silent as
the sound of light passes through.

place me in your dreams,
a soft and kind heart opening.
place me in your thinking,
somewhere that feels comfortable.

as gentle persuasion
I will light the moon,
and thicken the mist...
I will sculpt a pathway through the darkness.

walk with me...
let's share our stories.
entwine your hand in mine
with just enough space between
to let the light breathe.

walk with me...
upon this small face of earth,
and circle around one another
until we reach the beginning again,
where time has long forgotten us.

will we remember...
will we recognize ourselves
as we take a breath one of the other,
in gentle persuasion
and lost in the mist.

and then...
let us dance
at the edge
of the galaxy.



(I will sing for you, until you ask me to stop)

Solitude, when mind
is in my heart
I count its every beat,
as a pearl,
before I sleep;

in ecstasy, lullabied by its art,

and joyful tears
within my eyes, I weep
yet one more feather.

I read this among a batch of Irish sayings today, and well.....just kind of liked it. Of course, you have to read it with an accent...

"Kind eyes may speak the heart's desire,
When heart for heart doth beat,
But fond hearts will communicate
When the eyes cannot meet."