Homing Geese

Mary Oliver, my favorite nature poet writes about the return of the Canadian geese:

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.
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.

I am waiting for our lawn full of geese to come home. Two have sporadically appeared but maybe they have settled somewhere semi-wild to raise a family. I don't know. This is such a day as Oliver describes, some sun and "clear pebbles of rain" -- a new way for me to look at the world in which I live, one of the wonderful gifts of a poet.