As individuals we often hold ourselves back from our changing nature believing we shouldn’t be who we are becoming. A passing awareness of the crispness of the air, or the crunch of dry grass, the changing colors of trees along our way give us a chance to recognize that change is natural and happening all around..
In honor of all of us who embrace change, with courage or tremulousness, we would like to share Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese, from her 1992 book entitled Dream Work.
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.
from Mary Oliver, Dream Work, 1992.