{"id":1914,"date":"2016-08-08T00:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T04:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:47:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:47:40","slug":"aug-8-wild-geese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2016\/08\/08\/aug-8-wild-geese\/","title":{"rendered":"Aug 8 – “Wild Geese”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, August 8<\/strong> \u00a0 “over and over announcing your place
\nin the family of things.”<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I was catching up with an old friend after too long a hiatus. \u00a0I tracked his email address and found a batch of emails. \u00a0In three of them we exchanged posts about a poem both of us like a great deal. \u00a0I read it again and decided to post it on this first Monday of the second week of this new academic year. \u00a0I imagined that my dad would have liked this poem a lot. \u00a011 months ago, writing about this Mary Oliver poem, \u201cWild Geese,\u201d brought me back to October 1980 when he died. \u00a0I wrote:<\/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 down stairs 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

It\u2019s good to read strong poems, like this one, out loud.<\/p>\n

have a blest day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Post: \u00a0\u00a0\u201cWild Geese\u201d<\/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 \u2013
\nover and over announcing your place
\nin the family of things.<\/p>\n

\"MaryOliver\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mary Oliver
\nSept 10, 1935<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, August 8 \u00a0 “over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” Yesterday, I was catching up with an old friend after too long a hiatus. \u00a0I tracked his email address and found a batch of emails. … 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\/1914"}],"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=1914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1919,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions\/1919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}