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 to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
—Mary Oliver, Dream Work

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.But the blue rain sinks, straight to the whitefeet of the treeswhose mouths open.Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,until at last, now, they shinein your own yard?Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.When the Sufi poet whirled, was he lookingoutward, to the mountains so solidly therein a white-capped ring, or was he lookingto the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the ideathat was also there,beautiful as a thumbcurved and touching the finger, tenderly,little love-ring,as he whirled,oh jug of breath, in the garden of dust? -Mary Oliver Happy Earth Day, chickadees. (image via)
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Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,

in the garden of dust?

-Mary Oliver

Happy Earth Day, chickadees.

(image via)

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
Mary Oliver, “Starlings in Winter” (via thecupcaketologist)

(via thecupcaketologist-deactivated2)