Mary Oliver’s Healing Words

In times of heartache and failure, when you believe you are responsible for everything that is wrong and that it will be impossible to ever make things right because you’re not nearly as powerful as ought to be, read this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver. It will feel like your mother’s cool hand across your hot forehead.

Mary Oliver died today at the age of 83. What a remarkable sea of gifts she left us.

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