I was introduced to Mary Oliver's marvelous poems by Erie Chapman through the years on this Journal. I recall the first time I experienced "Wild Geese." It was life changing!

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.

As the years have passed, she became a welcome friend and companion. This week, I join in the world’s sadness with the news of her death. The following is an excerpt of another profound expression of hers. A journalist shared, "She taught me how to live."

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore, I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

Mary's light filled energy continues to grace our lives with her everlasting love.

Shared by Liz Sorensen Wessel
Watercolor by ~liz