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.


from Dream Work by Mary Oliver

(No) Sound of Breaking Heart

driving alone, talking to
walls and living among my own sounds
echoed in every movement, resonant
like glass underfoot; a crunch
ing sound would fit, but
silence: the quiet bed

my daughter's bird body
curled up, light as down, tucked
in the hollow of my broken heart
breast while the sun sets the sound
of sighing would fit, but
silence: the tortured dreaming

behind closed doors, a picking
over, combing through of a broken life
and other lives over and over again,
unbearable sequences shifted,
visited, revisited,
shifted. The sound of a wing
beat, frantic trapped
bird would fit, but
silence

is the sound of heartbreak

Twiceforty

eightydays in the desert
will burn your soul to purity
a vision quest, sudden
clarity

Phoenix

see how mythology tells
a human story: when the rhythm
of living is halted abruptly, when
human souls die and new lines
define sides of our lifetimes, we tell

of Rebirth.

(Art Cred: Merrill Mahaffey/Stolen from the interweb)

Penya-Sagats, 1926

their over-intellectualized analysis lacks for
I was there on the
rocks, the water chilled
as the sun sinks, slips
around the stone, tide scolding
a stray foot

Here. My figure fits among
the flattened faces, screens
that frame this moment as
he comes

find my skin prickled by wind,
the wet foot; I wear the whole sky
in fading light where the sea stretches out

accepting of our transgressions, swallowing
secrets, speaking only to clouds

Don't
uproot my body
and place me where I have not been--leas of green
or among the trees

for I may miss my lover
who seeks stone and sea
in search of me

Haiku for First Snowfall

a seed stirs; no one sees
the gesture of soft skin breaking, life
pushing gently out.

Telltale

your absense murmurs and
creaks over the floorboard
of my heart/my heart beats
buried under yous floor
boards