As I mentioned a while ago, Tim, a friend I met on my urban retreat recommended a new poet to me, someone he found inspiring. He recommended Mary Oliver to me, a wonderful poet who now lives very privately in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Mary Oliver’s work is full of references to the natural world, and ‘nature’ has a potent and respected influence on her. She must be a most keen observer of wild-life, of natural light, and seasons’ change, and her poetry is threaded through with references, and observations of little things as well as the grand.
Wild GeeseYou 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 ~
Lois Elsden 