“Wild 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,
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.
Love Poems
Little Crazy Love Song
I don’t want eventual,
I want soon.
It’s 5 a.m. It’s noon.
It’s dusk falling to dark.
I listen to music.
I eat up a few wild poems
while time creeps along
as though it’s got all day.
This is what I have.
The dull hangover of waiting,
the blush of my heart on the damp grass,
the flower-faced moon.
A gull broods on the shore
where a moment ago there were two.
Softly my right hand fondles my left hand
as though it were you.
The First Day
After you left
I jumped up and down,
I clapped my hands,
I stared into space.
In those days I was starving for happiness.
So, say it was both silly and serious.
Say it was the first warm sting of possibility.
Say I sensed the spreading warmth of joy.
I Know Someone
I know someone who kisses the way
a flower opens, but more rapidly.
Flowers are sweet. They have
short, beatific lives. They offer
much pleasure. There is
nothing in the world that can be said
against them.
Sad, isn’t it, that all they can kiss
is the air.
Yes, yes! We are the lucky ones.
I Did Think, Let’s Go About This Slowly
I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.
But, bless us, we didn’t.
How do I love you?
How do I love you?
Oh, this way and that way.
Oh, happily. Perhaps
I may elaborate by
demonstration? Like
this, and
like this and
no more words now
That Little Beast
That pretty little beast, a poem,
has a mind of its own.
Sometimes I want it to crave apples
but it wants red meat.
Sometimes I want to walk peacefully
on the shore
and it wants to take off all its clothes
and dive in.
Sometimes I want to use small words
and make them important
and it starts shouting the dictionary,
the opportunities.
Sometimes I want to sum up and give thanks,
putting things in order
and it starts dancing around the room
on its four furry legs, laughing
and calling me outrageous.
But sometimes, when I’m thinking about you,
and no doubt smiling,
it sits down quietly, one paw under its chin,
and just listens.
Everything That Was Broken
Everything that was broken has
forgotten its brokenness. I live
now in a sky-house, through every
window the sun. Also your presence.
Our touching, our stories. Earthy
and holy both. How can this be, but
it is. Every day has something in
it whose name is Forever.
Except for the Body
Except for the body
of someone you love,
including all its expressions
in privacy and in public,
trees, I think,
are the most beautiful
forms on the earth.
Though, admittedly,
if this were a contest,
the trees would come in
an extremely distant second.
I Don’t Want to Lose
I don’t want to lose a single thread
from the intricate brocade of this happiness.
I want to remember everything.
Which is why I’m lying awake, sleepy
but not sleepy enough to give it up.
Just now, a moment from a year ago:
the early morning light, the deft, sweet
gesture of your hand
reaching for me.
Poems Written After Molly’s Death
After Her Death
I am trying to find the lesson
for tomorrow. Matthew something.
Which lectionary? I have not
forgotten the Way, but, a little,
the way to the Way. The trees keep whispering
peace, peace, and the birds
in the shallows are full of the
bodies of small fish and are
content. They open their wings
so easily, and fly. It is still
possible.
I open the book
which the strange, difficult, beautiful church
has given me. To Matthew. Anywhere.
Those Days
When I think of her I think of the long summer days
she lay in the sun, how she loved the sun, how we
spread our blanket, and friends came, and
the dogs played, and then I would get restless and
get up and go off to the woods
and the fields, and the afternoon would
soften gradually and finally I would come
home, through the long shadows, and into the house
where she would be
my glorious welcoming, tan and hungry and ready to tell
the hurtless gossips of the day and how I
listened leisurely while I put
around the room flowers in jars of water—
daisies, butter-and-eggs, and everlasting—
until like our lives they trembled and shimmered
everywhere.
Percy (Four)
I went to church.
I walked on the beach
And played with Percy.
I answered the phone
And paid the bills
I did the laundry.
I spoke her name
A hundred times.
I knelt in the dark
And said some holy words.
I went downstairs,
I watered the flowers.
I fed Percy.
What I Said at Her Service
When we pray to love God perfectly,
Surely we do not mean only.
(Lord, see how well I have done.)
“Thank you, thank you.”
The Whistler
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.
Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.
I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle.
Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.
And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with
for thirty years?
This clear, dark, lovely whistler?
I Have Just Said
I have just said
something
ridiculous to you
and in response,
your glorious laughter.
These are the days
the sun
is swimming back
to the east
and the light on the water
gleams
as never, it seems, before.
I can’t remember
every spring,
I can’t remember
everything–
so many years!
Are the morning kisses
the sweetest
or the evenings
or the inbetweens?
All I know
is that “thank you” should appear
somewhere.
So, just in case
I can’t find
the perfect place–
“Thank you, thank you.”
