14: Wild Geese and the Family of Things

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This special episode of Bristlecone Firesides: Summer Sessions is all about the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. While this poem has been referenced in a previous episode, it is just so good that Madison and Abbey thought it’d be worth a full episode to break it down, line by line. Topics covered include: accepting the soft animal of your body, shedding our loneliness by joining the family of things, and participating in the great good flow of reality. This conversation turned out to be one of our favorites and actually serves as a good teaser for season two. So please enjoy.

Wild Geese by 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.