"I'm gonna take my chances on everyday."

I get so down sometimes. Sorry about that last post... I don't know what got into me.

I bought a book of poems from Barnes & Noble last night, a book that I flip through every time I go in the store but for whatever reason have always refrained from buying. It's 460 pages worth of poems selected by Garrison Keillor... one of my most favorite authors. I read a little bit of it this afternoon, and the very first poem that I turned to just made my entire day... and made me remember what a pathetic post I wrote last night. But it also brought a smile to my face and made me feel a lot better. Here it is:


Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

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.