Geese and Poetry

Well, it has been awhile (though let me just say I have written and not posted several blogs, not that that's necessarily a good thing, just kinda wanting to say I haven't completely ignored the blog, just felt somewhat reticent about posting) and I guess I don't have much to share, but lately I keep thinking about posting poems I like, so that's what I'm gonna do.

It's funny to say this, as a writer and a person who LOVES lyrics, but I am not so big on poetry. Out of any form of writing, I know without question that it's my weakest area. And it takes a lot for me to really like a poem. In several instances, I like poems that friends have written more than those by established poets, but from going to several poetry gatherings on Orcas I have collected and cultivated some that I really love. I've been going through all my folders lately, so it's been nice to come acrosss some of these treasures. I want to read over the ones I've collected, and collect more. And I just feel like sharing.

So the one I have really been thinking about lately is "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. I am not always a huge fan of hers, but it seems this one comes in and out of my life. I've read it at various writers circles and workshops, it's quoted in my friend Janet Thomas' book Day Breaks Over Dharamsala and it was on my mind a lot when I went and did the Snow Goose weekend over spring break in Montana. I was sort of leading the poetry and writing section of that weekend and one of the things I wanted to do was bring in poems about birds or geese (and just as an aside, one of the many conclusions I've come to after my first year of biology with the aid of that weekend in Montana, is that birds are AMAZING creatures). I didn't really think this poem was great to read to eight-year-olds, but it's been on my mind off and on, ever since.


"Wild Geese"
by Mary Oliver

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.


I love that line, "You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." And when she says, "the world offers itself to your imagination," I immediately think of the natural world, and I relate to that. And who can resist a poem that starts with, "You do not have to be good"? That opening line will make anyone feel a sense of relief!


I also found this one, "Snow Geese" which I wish I had found before the Snow Goose weekend because it's a bit more accessible I think, to kids. Mary Oliver writes a lot about nature, and animals, and sometimes it's just a little too sweet and soft for me. I think that a lot about a lot of poets, like they're just saying, I saw this beautiful scene, but don't give it a story, if that makes sense. I like poems that awaken me to something, that make me feel, or think, or give me chills, or won't get out of my head, or make me hold my breath the way she describes in this following poem. So with that said, I must say I like "Wild Geese" above better than what I'm about to post, but since we're on the topic of geese, and since I like it okay, especially the beginning, here it is:

"Snow Geese"
by Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won't.
It doesn't matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.


Experiencing migrating snow geese really is a rare, transient and pretty astonishing thing to witness.