Remembering Mary Oliver
It’s long been a custom here in Springwater to have readings on the last day of retreat. Among the favorites have been poems by Mary Oliver, the distinguished American poet who died in January. Toni Packer, the Center’s founder, very much appreciated her poems and shared with her a clarity of seeing and love of nature. Many will remember hearing Toni and other retreat leaders and participants reading Mary Oliver’s poem “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.
