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 you 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
the mountains and the rivers
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are headed 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.

~from Collected Poems by Mary Oliver