“The Journey” by Mary Oliver
“The Journey” by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
I tore that poem out of some magazine-Real Simple or Oprah I think, several years ago. I still have it somewhere. It resonated somewhere deep inside so I held on to it. Then this fall I started titling my posts with Autumn/Nature/Life quotes and started seeing Mary Oliver’s name quite a bit. Then I did more reading and realized that I had found a poet who really speaks to me. I pull up one of her quotes or a poem and feel like I can breathe a little deeper. The other day my Facebook status was “Laurie Viets wants to run through the house writing Mary Oliver poems on the walls with thick black marker and glitter glue”. I might settle for printing them out and taping them to the walls.
OK. One more and then I must go to bed.
“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,
call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
— Mary Oliver
