Day: Mar 3, 2015

Geese by Mary Oliver

dandelion 3

http://www.oprah.com/entertainment/Maria-Shriver-Interviews-Poet-Mary-Oliver/2

Mary Oliver is a favourite of mine.
She rarely gives interviews

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 your 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.

If only life could be captured

How beautiful it was when the sun shone

And I walked with you,my dear husband, through the gardens.

How happy I was to sit with you by the lake

and to hear the water from the fountain splash.

It’s our our favourite music now we cannot visit the sea

To hear the tide rush in,then fall sucking on the shingley beach.

But I see it in my minds eye.

Aldeburgh,the fishing boats go out at sunrise.

I awoke early and saw the sun across the sea

and the boats setting out in the soft light.

Dunwich,the heath filled with birds

the cliff and the beach where sometimes one can find marble

from one of the many churches washed away by the encroaching sea.

And Southwold,the marsh so quiet I heard crickets.

We went across the Blyth in the rowing boat

And saw the place from which our picture of Walberswick was painted…

If only life could be captured,slowed, for a few minutes

for us to receive the beauty and hear the sound of the sea

The everlasting music of the heart ,

Rhythm and pulse,the wet sand sliding under my barefeet

amongst those tiny sea shells.

I shall remember