I’ve been appreciating my life so deeply in the last few months. A friend just sent this poem to me, and it touched me, as I head out this morning to connect with the birds and the chill in the air with 20 of my closest friends. Thanks, members of my meetups, for filling me with such gratitude and renewing my certainty that I am exactly where I belong. Maybe I’ll even have a photo of a wild goose to add to this post later today!!

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.

-Mary Oliver