Wild Geese

You don't 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 rain are moving across the landscape
over the praries and the deep trees
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhle 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 ike the wild geese,
harsh and exciting,
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver