For Smeltz

One of my dearest friends who happens to be a rather spectacular poet arrives tomorrow at 7:00pm for the weekend (not that I’m counting down or anything). I’ll get to hear her work at a reading Saturday night, we’ll eat and drink and sit quietly and just understand each other and laugh and laugh and laugh. And this poem makes me think of her. ~LP

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