Toss the Birds Some Bread

For a while this one poem followed me around. Followed ... ok, maybe more like showed up in my life. At the weirdest times, not necessarily moments of deep, reflection where it made a huge impact and my life was forever changed from that moment on. No, more like odd times that made me pause, but then I just carried on.

Sophomore year. My friend makes a table for our other friend. She has laminated a poem to the top. THE poem. Or how about one day I was walking downtown in Burlington VT and stepped on a piece of paper. Turns out this poem, THE poem, was on that piece of paper. A few years out of college, this "screwed up" guy we all knew comes to visit while I am back in VT. He brings with him this piece of birch bark I gave him YEARS ago, with a poem on it. THE poem. (of course I put it there. but this was a "screw up" who I thought would toss that thing the first chance he got. Instead, he went on to tell me how many times he read the poem, and felt like it helped him feel better and get through some tough times. CRIPES!) Or fast forward to a September 11th remembrance ceremony. Joe Biden steps up to the podium and reads a poem. THE poem.

Oddly I only vaguely remember the poem's first entrance into my life. I remember more the way or means through which it entered my life, which was via my friend Laurie. I think. She had a book of Mary Oliver poems and I think THE poem was included. Or was it my friend Kathleen who had the book and introduced it to Laurie and I? Memory! So faulty a thing to call upon in times of need. However it came to me, I am happy that it did. Every time I read it, I still feel moved. I get reminded of myself as a small piece of something so much larger than myself, how my tragedies and happinesses all fit inside this larger thing and can be swallowed up, but incorporated. That no matter what, as long as I'm of this earth, myself always has a place here. Here. Wherever I am.

It is a beautiful poem. It is hanging in my bathroom, on a homemade collage type back drop I made. Many a pee-er or shitter have commented on it, saying "oh my god I LOVE that poem." Maybe you'll love it, too.

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 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.