Heading Home, Again and Again

On Mary Oliver's acclaimed poem, "Wild Geese"

I start most mornings with Mary Oliver.

When there are no clouds, I sit on my swing wrapped in the wool blanket Jay bought in Ecuador while we were dating. A cup of hot coffee sits on the railing to the right. Birds, so many, singing. And a poem or two.

Mary Oliver was born in northern Ohio, wrote 26 books of poetry (one of which won the Pulitzer, the most significant literary prize), and died in 2019.

I like Mary Oliver not because she was born in the same state as me (we in the south don’t really consider northerners to be kin; probably vice versa) but because she’s very accessible. Simple to read, yet painting a masterpiece of a landscape around us. We’re not just observing her artwork; we are in it. We are part of it.

Today, I’m reading one of her most well-known poems: “Wild Geese.” Page 347 from her collection, Devotions, which she selected and arranged right before she died.

Would you like to join me?

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Here are some options:

Read the poem.

Listen to me read it to you.

Or (and even better) listen to Mary Oliver read it herself.

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This poem feels like:

• laying on a fluffy pillow

• lying on a soft and clean pillow

• lying on a bleacher and soft pillow

• lying on a fluffy pillow between bleached sheets

This poem feels like lying on a fluffy pillow between bleached sheets.

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When M.O. begins with “you,” she addresses the reader. She’s talking to you. She’s talking to me. We are here together.

This poem is a single stanza of seventeen lines, but I notice three movements within it. Could you hear or see them when you listened to/read it? I’ll show you.

1. Permission: to not be good

(Lines 1 - 4)

Addressing us, the readers, M.O. says:

You do not have to be good. (Line 1)

So—we have permission, from her, to be “bad”?

Not exactly.

But what is she saying?

You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. (2-3)

I feel parched and fatigued just reading these lines. Imagine it: you aren’t walking like a normal person. Not on your legs and not on all fours. You are walking on your knees. And not in the grass (or, mercifully, a sidewalk) but in the desert, across rough sand, for a hundred miles. And this hundred-mile desert knee hike is an act of repentance. You aren’t just physically tired. Your soul is weary too.

Been there?

Me too.

M.O. starts with “good” (and its implicit counterpart, “bad”) because she knows this is where we are, assessing ourselves and the world through binary lenses: black and white, this not that, right and wrong. M.O. is giving us an opportunity for more. Instead of simplifying everything into “good” and “bad,” we can approach our lives, in this poem, with honesty, with the truth. We can accept when and where and who we are—all the parts—the good, the bad, everything between.

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This inward acceptance moves us from isolation (only looking at ourselves) to communion (being able to also see someone else).

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2. Invitation: to tell about our despair

(Lines 5-12)

Now, we get to walk into a room like this one, this home we are growing.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. (5)

This line is magic to me. So sincere and honest. Unafraid. Like M.O. is ready to look you in the eyes and not look away when you say what you have to say.

Look at the word, “despair,” and what follows it.

Despair: common to everyone, unique in each person’s experience of it, and M.O., with this construction, makes room for all of it. The despair we share, your despair, mine. She establishes a safe place, a room where we are not alone in our most lonely of experiences.

Then, repetition of this word, “Meanwhile.”

Meanwhile the world goes on…
Meanwhile the sun...
Meanwhile the wild geese... (6-7, 8)

“…the world goes on…” As it must, as it will. This is both good and bad—a complication, again, of those words. Here, in this poem, we do not have to keep up with the world, its ongoingness. But when we leave this room, we will have some catching up to do.

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This second part ends with wild geese “heading home again” (11-12). How different this feels from “walking on your knees… repenting” (2-3)! I’m drawn to this word, “again”—suggests the cyclical nature of home for the geese. They aren’t always home, but they have one. We get to watch them fly home. In observing their journey, we get to go part of the way with them.

We may be sitting in despair, but the world goes on, the geese fly home. And we will too, eventually—perhaps over and over and over again.

3. Reservation: for everyone, everything

(Lines 13-17)

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. (13-17)

There is a place for us. There is a place for all of us—each one and every part, here and now, then and later. And not just us but everything too. I love how she ends with “things”—inclusive, ambiguous. She saves room for all our stories and everything beyond, everything we cannot understand but which touches us.

We aren’t going to figure it all out; there is no easy “good” and “bad.” There is just us and the geese, growing a home in the despair (and joy) right here.

Do let me know your thoughts, what you notice, what you think. I’m listening.

Take care.

—CJS

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