Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West

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

From Dream Work published by Atlantic Monthly Press

This photo of a family of Canadian Geese was taken by Ken West Iowa Landscape and Nature Photography. Ken West and his unique landscape photographs are featured on IPTV show Iowa Outdoors.

For more on Mary Oliver see The Journey by Mary Oliver, with links to other poems and an interview with Maria Shriver.

Listen to Krista Tippett interview Mary Oliver about her creative process On Being: Listening to the World.

Another beautiful poem by Mary Oliver is The Swan.

See this remembrance of Mary Oliver with links to more of her poems.

Tags: iowa landscape, Ken West, landscape photographs, Mary Oliver, Poetry, wild geese

This entry was posted on November 14, 2011 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Literature, Mary Oliver, Other poems, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West”

The Journey by Mary Oliver « The Uncarved Blog Says:
November 14, 2011 at 1:22 pm | Reply
[…] Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West […]

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Ken West and his unique landscape photographs are featured on IPTV show Iowa Outdoors « The Uncarved Blog Says:
November 14, 2011 at 11:37 pm | Reply
[…] Iowan: Sizing Up Small Towns: Rethinking Success in Rural Iowa: Fairfield Thinks Inclusively Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West […]

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Nathanael Chawkin Says:
February 28, 2013 at 11:38 am | Reply
Beautiful!

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Mary Oliver’s Summer Day is filled with wonder | The Uncarved Blog Says:
June 23, 2014 at 1:32 pm | Reply
[…] poems: The Journey by Mary Oliver | Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West | Varanasi by Mary Oliver in A […]

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Mary Oliver’s transcendent experience at the lake, put into words, might leave you breathless | The Uncarved Blog Says:
May 27, 2015 at 11:38 am | Reply
[…] these other lovely poems by Mary Oliver: Summer Day, Varanasi, Praying, Wild Geese, and The […]

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The job of a poet — someone’s gotta do it! | The Uncarved Blog Says:
May 27, 2015 at 6:32 pm | Reply
[…] you breathless. Enjoy these other lovely poems by Mary Oliver: Summer Day, Varanasi, Praying, Wild Geese, and The […]

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RIP: Mary Oliver. Thank you for sharing your poetic gifts with us. They are a national treasure! | The Uncarved Blog Says:
January 20, 2019 at 1:14 am | Reply
[…] astonishing poems on my blog. Here they are listed in the order I discovered them: The Journey, Wild Geese, Praying, Varanasi, Summer Day, At the Lake, One, White Owl Flies Into And Out Of The […]

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Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, photo by Ken West

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