I love to see the Canada Geese that pass through this part of California during their migrations. I always look anxiously to see that each has its mate, and am sorry for any that don't. (If three travel together, I wonder about how well that arrangement is working out for them.)
I love the call of the geese, and the way they move once they are in the air, as though they proceed ahead just by the force of the will of their long necks.
The girls' daycare provider spent last week at a workshop about cultivating peace, and part of the curriculum was poetry, including this one. I keep re-reading the first few lines.
By Mary Oliver:
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 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.
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