Mary Oliver: Wild Geese

     When I first read this poem I was instantly drawn into it. While drawing on depictions of nature and geese, Oliver really tells the story of the human experience. How simple we are as creations amongst the natural world and how small our worries really are in the grand scheme of things. She says you do not have to be good or walk through the desert repenting you just have to love what you love. I think the line that stood out to me the most was, "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on." As humans we all have our struggles and troubled times that consume our minds on the daily. She offers this transaction of despairs to almost show how everyone is going through something but the world still moves on. We should not be hung up on the small moment of despair but look up to the whole world ahead of us. She ends by saying, "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, hard and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things." Here I believe she is saying that no matter where we are in our lives or how lonely we feel, we are apart of a greater family of creation. The world has a calling for us, a purpose just like the geese. The world is a vast place full of opportunity and the small troubles of our lives cannot take away what is to come in our future.

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