On Saturday the weather was so warm I had the windows in my studio open for the first time, into the night. And at my desk I heard wild geese calling. It's so strange to hear geese at night, but I have at particular moments of importance in my life heard them calling from the dark sky several times. I don't know what was so important about this weekend, not much really. But the geese and several strange dreams brought me once again to this poem, that is so well loved it's overused, but I'm putting it here anyway.
I'm so glad they are on their way home. It's been a long, cold and lonesome winter.
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.
