meanwhile, the world goes on

Nearly all my favorite poetry is by dead white males, and sometimes that bothers me a lot. So today, I think we need a living woman in the mix. (Also, somebody who writes under their first name and not just their initials, because that was getting a little too consistent, what with Thomas Stearns and Edward Estlin and Alfred Edward). I have two favorite Mary Oliver poems. This is one, and I expect I'll post the other later in the month.

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, Wild Geese, from Dream Work, 1986