Mary Oliver, “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, 1935-2019 – “Wild Geese” from Devotions: Selected Poems

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  1. 1304sdf652 Avatar
    1304sdf652

    sparkling! 82Allen Ginsberg, “Blessed be the Muses”

    Like

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#231: The mythology of the moon – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 6/1/26: Tonight, we delve into the significance of the moon in mythology, religion, and folklore. I read from the Taschen Book of Symbols, the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, and Mircea Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion.Finally, and most personally, I read about the history of Rosh Chodesh, the monthly Jewish holiday recognizing the New Moon. For this, I read a passage from Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s A Guide to Jewish Prayer.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
  1. #231: The mythology of the moon
  2. #230 – The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic
  3. #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture
  4. #228 – What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974
  5. #227 – The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem
  6. #226: The Vitality and terror of cities
  7. #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling
  8. #224: Let's talk about William Blake
  9. #223 – How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens
  10. #222: Seamus Heaney – 10 Essential Poems

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