Last summer when I was in Santa Cruz for therapy, Henry pushed me in the wheelchair to a downtown bookstore and parked me in the art section. The first book I pulled off the shelf was about Swoon, a street artist. I opened it and found tucked inside a black and white drawing of a dandelion in a state of artistic transformation. On the back was this handwritten message:
KEEP THIS…
YOU HAVE FOUND ONE OF MANY DRAWINGS I HAVE MADE AND LEFT OUT IN THE WORLD. BY FINDING THIS IT WAS MEANT TO BE YOURS, THE UNIVERSE CONSPIRED TO BRING YOU TO THIS PLACE. AND THE DRAWING TO YOU.
I did keep it. I have yet to communicate with S. Zontos, the artist who signed the drawing, but it pleased me to receive this special gift that day. My friend and fellow PDer wrote about a similar experience. I found it so profound I asked him if I could post it here:
Early Friday morning, walking through my neighborhood, admiring the trees and flowers, I noticed a tiny leaf with a long stem, suspended in midair, swaying back and forth. It must have been hooked on a spider’s web strand - but no matter how closely I looked I could not see it.
Heartened by this beauty and delicacy, I turned to continue my walk – only to see, right there, a post with a few poems neatly tacked to it. The one at eye level with the delicate leaf - only a pirouette away - was Mary Oliver’s, Wild Geese.
This is what Mary said to me that morning:
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.
From Dream Work by Mary Oliver published by Atlantic Monthly Press ©Mary Oliver
Heartened by this beauty and delicacy, I turned to continue my walk – only to see, right there, a post with a few poems neatly tacked to it. The one at eye level with the delicate leaf - only a pirouette away - was Mary Oliver’s, Wild Geese.
This is what Mary said to me that morning:
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.
From Dream Work by Mary Oliver published by Atlantic Monthly Press ©Mary Oliver
Thank you for sharing the Mary Oliver poem. She is gift to the world.
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