Poem: Wild Geese

Rob has been wonderful, listening to me vent about work. He emailed me this poem this morning. It brought tears to my eyes.

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 sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and 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

I am so grateful for the people in my support system, who engage me emotionally with sympathy and intellectually with their pointed questions and comments, reminding me ultimately that I am not trapped, that I do have choices, and for now I choose to remain in a situation that is unbearable to me, because I see the light at the end of the tunnel.