The Family of Things

MORE POETRY today from Rebel Girl who is trying to muster up the energy to finish grading, compile the summer schedule, pack for Mexico and relate to you all the sad tale of her student and maybe yours who needs assistance perhaps more than he knows. More on that later but get your checkbooks ready. Rebel Girl has opened a savings account at the teachers credit union with his name on it and will be asking, soon, for your donations.

Meanwhile, poetry, from the inimitable Mary Oliver.

RG's colleague, L.T., who has given her many things through the years, both tangible and intangible, once gifted Rebel with a collection of Oliver's The Leaf and the Cloud, which introduced her to this fine poet.

Poetry helps—it does, it does! Here is some advice from William Carlos Williams (from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,") before the Oliver poem finally arrives:

"It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there."

Indeed. Another day I'll write the essay about how in high school I picked up William Carlos Williams in the library because I thought the middle name Carlos suggested he was of Mexican descent like me...For those of you who don't know, he isn't.

And now the poem:


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.
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