Mary Oliver

I love Mary Oliver's poetry and tonight, on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, he read Wild Geese. It could not have been more perfect timing for my lonely heart. I was driving all the way to Rend Lake to see the water. This was where my husband took me for my birthday last year...

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.

And then I took Zac to play on the big slides of the playground. He had so much fun!! Yesterday we went to Cedar Lake to swim. And eat watermelon.