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 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.
Commentary
I stumbled upon this poem most unexpectedly and I love the way the poem ‘feels’. Not being into analysing poems, all I can add is I found myself re-discovering all those little joys in the world around me, that Mary Oliver speaks of in her poems.
— Aparna
Biography
Mary Oliver is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry and prose, including “New and Selected Poems”, “American Primitive”(Pulitzer Prize winner 1984), “House of Light”, and “Blue Pastures”. A longtime resident of Provincetown, Massachussetts, she is now the Catharine Osgood Foster Professor at Bennington College, Vermont. (From the cover of her book “New and Selected Poems”).
Thomas adds
Is it just me or is there a distinct Native American feel to this poem? Oh, and while you’re answering that question, check out Chief Seattle’s Reply to the men who wanted to buy his land, poem #184, and also the Navajo Night Way Ceremony, poem #344.
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Jennie Jones · 29 January 2003
this poem is excellent the way it can make your mood change from sad to happy
sandi_ordinario · 1 May 2003
The poet starts out by saying in essence that studied grace or developed character does not matter. What matters is what is instinctive,
what is elemental in one.
You can try to tell me your despair and though I will tell you mine also, it does not really matter. The world does not care about this or our other experiences. It does not matter how exciting or how depressing they may be, nature continues with both inanimate and animate forms in their natural cyclical occurrences.
She takes the flight of wild geese as the animate example of cyclical occurrence in nature which she describes in the last few lines as being
called by the world to be such.
Whoever or whatever you are, the world of nature does not discriminate but rather lends itself to your imagination as if instinctively calling you to “announce” your place in what I might call the natural romance of things.
A positive poem which calls people to respond to anything in a natural manner or just as nature intended.
Sandi