{"id":1509,"date":"2015-09-21T00:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T04:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1509"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:49:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:49:17","slug":"sept-21-wild-geese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2015\/09\/21\/sept-21-wild-geese\/","title":{"rendered":"Sept 21 – Wild Geese"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday September 21, 1906 \u00a0 – \u00a0Louis W Staudenmaier<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today is my father\u2019s birthday. \u00a0 When sifting poems for this morning\u2019s post, he came to mind. \u00a0He died of cancer when I was 40; \u00a0it was time enough for us to become something more than a son and his dad; \u00a0we became soul friends. \u00a0Dad was good at that. \u00a0He blended intelligence with the gift of welcoming the people who entered his life. \u00a0I remember thinking during his wake in our small northern Wisconsin mill town, how proud we kids were that judges and attorneys were not the only sort of people who came to say goodbye; \u00a0mill workers and farmers, women and men, ordinary people felt at home with him, told him their troubles, traded jokes, listened to each other.<\/p>\n

While he was dying, after pancreatic cancer gone to the liver made him thin and jaundiced, one day he put on a business suit, now too big for his body, and went one last time to the little city bank where he had been president for years. \u00a0 He stopped at each person\u2019s work place, told each\u00a0person goodbye, that he was proud to have worked with them, shook hands, and came back \u00a0home where we had moved his bed into the dining room for his last weeks.<\/p>\n

A man who enjoyed the ordinary human condition and respected the women and men who lived it. \u00a0He would have liked this poem. \u00a0The poem likes him I think.<\/p>\n

Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post\u00a0 – \u00a0\u201cWild Geese\u201d \u00a0Mary Oliver
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

You do not have to be good.
\nYou do not have to walk on your knees
\nfor a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
\nYou only have to let the soft animal of your body
\nlove what it loves.
\nTell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
\nMeanwhile the world goes on.
\nMeanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
\nare moving across the landscapes,
\nover the prairies and the deep trees,
\nthe mountains and the rivers.
\nMeanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
\nare heading home again.
\nWhoever you are, no matter how lonely,
\nthe world offers itself to your imagination,
\ncalls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
\nover and over announcing your place
\nin the family of things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday September 21, 1906 \u00a0 – \u00a0Louis W Staudenmaier Today is my father\u2019s birthday. \u00a0 When sifting poems for this morning\u2019s post, he came to mind. \u00a0He died of cancer when I was 40; \u00a0it was time enough for us … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1513,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions\/1513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}