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 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 you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--
I've been going through a little something. Due in part, I think, to the transition back to work, but also just patterns and tendencies in my own life. I still want to write our birth story. (I still want to send out Caleb's birth announcements, which were supposed to be Christmas cards, too.)
But not yet. Not today.
It was reassuring to read an old post on Cup of Jo today, where I was reminded of the poem above. One foot in front of the other. . . On you go.
