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.

[source]

We went home on an emergency visit this past weekend. The third member of our not-poly plural family, Cassiopeia, had news that her grandpa was ill. So we combined her visit to see him with The Hubs’ and my visit to see houses. (Her grandpa is not as ill as she first expected, but he’s not doing well, either. It’s good that we’re moving back to the state.)

Meanwhile the sun and the sharp scent of pine moved across the air.
Meanwhile the Canadian geese honked in their travels overhead.

It was really good to be back home. I am still sad about leaving Baltimore, but now I know, viscerally, why we’re moving back. And I have a story that fits. We are not like the kids from nowheresville who move to The City to make it big, and only come home after they’ve done it, which is the story I had in mind when we moved out here. Instead we are like the salmon, who spend their adult lives in the ocean and then, when the time is right, travel back to the small streams they’re from.

Being out here was good. The experience will always be a part of us. Now, however, it’s time to go back to our place in the family of things.

PS: Cassiopeia made pancakes she is so awesome. (I told her I was writing that in my post, so there it is.)

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