Source Poems: "Wild Geese"

For National Poetry Month 2014, I have invited 17 authors and poets to guest post about source poems. In this series of essays, each writer will describe a single poem's significance in his or her life.

Poet and educator Margaret Simon -- one of our Pantone Poetry Project regulars -- is today's guest blogger. Margaret blogs at Reflections on the Teche.

Margaret Simon

Words are the gift of poets, and Mary Oliver is a master. A good friend gave me one of the first poems I heard by Mary Oliver. At the time, I was struggling with a professional position. This was one teaching job that I thought was IT, the perfect one for me. Then the unimaginable happened. My administrator found me inadequate, not good enough.

In my contract, I was being forced to go back to college for math. At the time, I had completed a masters program in gifted, been a teacher-consultant for the National Writing Project for 10 years, and had taught for nearly 20 years. My whole body revolted. I knew without a doubt that I would never be able to be a passionate math teacher. And a part of me was deeply insulted that it wasn’t enough to be a passionate writing teacher. I quit. I didn’t sign the contract. But my spirit was devastated. I was not good enough, a failure.

Mary Oliver saved me.

“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.”

The soft animal of my body fell in love again and again with this poem. Her words were more than a comfort; they empowered me. I could move on, be good again, and be a part of the world.

“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.”

My dear husband asked, “What do you want to do?” He encouraged me to pursue a job that would fit me, one where I could teach what I love. I did find it. I have been happily teaching gifted elementary students for the last 7 years. Ironically, I do have to teach math sometimes, but I find a way to work in writing, too.

I still go back to Mary Oliver’s words over and over. I am an achiever, a do-gooder, never-say-no kind of person.  "Wild Geese" has taught me to honor the person I am and to be willing to make mistakes, to not always be perfect. I realize that no matter what, I am loved. And I can love what I love without excuses.

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.

Read the rest at The Writer's Almanac.

Or watch Mary Oliver read the poem:

Knowing

            a response to “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

The moon glows in rings of light.

My soft body relaxes,

knowing

Jupiter is shining in the predawn sky

saying

You are enough.

You do not have to be good.

Love what you love.

Listen

to the train in the distance

shouting its presence

to the world.

Stop,

write a poem from your heart.

Wait

for the train to pass.

I stop to pay attention

to the fading full moon

and Jupiter and

the endless cars of this train.

I can become one

in the family

of things.

--Margaret Simon

italics indicate Mary Oliver’s words

Mary Oliver
From The Poetry Foundation

Margaret Simon is a Mississippi native who married into a Louisiana life. She lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana with her husband, Jeff. Their now empty nest once housed three daughters, Maggie, Katherine, and Martha. Margaret has been an elementary school teacher for 28 years, most recently teaching gifted students in Iberia Parish. She has published poems in the journal The Aurorean, and wrote a chapter about teaching poetry to young children for Women on Poetry published in 2012 by McFarland  & Company, Inc. Publishers. Border Press published her collection of poems with her father’s Christmas card art, Illuminate in fall of 2013 [featured at AuthorAmok here]. Blessen, a novel for young readers, was published in April 2012, also by Border Press. In her teaching profession, she has a Masters degree in Gifted Education and certification by the National Boards for Professional Teaching Standards. Margaret writes a blog regularly at http://reflectionsontheteche.wordpress.com.

Previous posts in this series:

Laura Shovan on "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams

Dylan Bargteil on "On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma" by June Jordan

J. C. Elkin on "Hannibal Clim" (author unknown)

Diane Mayr on a haiku by Basho

Jone MacCulloch on "We Are Waiting (a pantoum)" by Joyce Sidman

Mary Bargteil on Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Jacqueline Jules on "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes

Pamela Murray Winters on "The Land of Counterpane" by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dennis Kirschbaum on "Rain" by Robert Louis Stevenson
Janet Fagal on "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats

Linda Baie on "The Way It Is" by William Stafford

Pat Valdata on "Sea Fever" by John Masefield

Shirley Brewer on "The Singers" by Eavan Boland

Renee LaTulippe on "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

Ann Bracken on "The Well of Grief" by David Whyte