Mary oliver wild geese pdf

Wild Geese Poetry Diary, Ian Coldwell. A short summary of this paper. Wild Geese. It allows us not to be good, it tells us not to grovel and gives us permission to let our flesh do what it loves, and we all know what that is. Wild geese require that we share our human despair with one another, and it reminds us of the ongoingness of the wild natural things that nourish the earth and us, the sun, rain, trees and rivers that Mary sees from up above, looking down and from down below, looking up.

And there is the metaphor of heading home as we do over and over, home to our loneliness. High up the air is clear and blue; a pristine realm, perhaps it is heaven. Published by Grove Atlantic, New York. Photograph Courtesy of www. Related Papers Goddess in Carrington and H. 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.

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