Guest poem submitted by Aparna Chennapragada :
(Poem #426) 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 your 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. |
I stumbled upon this poem most unexpectedly and I love the way the poem 'feels'. Not being into analysing poems, all I can add is I found myself re-discovering all those little joys in the world around me, that Mary Oliver speaks of in her poems. Aparna. [Bio] Mary Oliver is the author of more than ten volumes of poetry and prose, including "New and Selected Poems", "American Primitive"(Pulitzer Prize winner 1984), "House of Light", and "Blue Pastures". A longtime resident of Provincetown, Massachussetts, she is now the Catharine Osgood Foster Professor at Bennington College, Vermont. (From the cover of her book "New and Selected Poems"). [thomas adds] Is it just me or is there a distinct Native American feel to this poem? Oh, and while you're answering that question, check out Chief Seattle's Reply to the men who wanted to buy his land, poem #184, and also the Navajo Night Way Ceremony, poem #344.
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