Poems

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.

By Mary Oliver

I have a feeling

that my boat has struck,

Down there in the

depths, against a great thing.

And nothing

happens! Nothing...

Silence...Waves...

Nothing happens?

Or has everything happened.

And we are standing now,

Quietly in the new life?

By J.R. Jimenez

Laurie Chandler, MA, Marriage and Family Therapy Registered Intern (IMF #64780)

Supervised by Peggy Handler, LMFT, MFC 32077 * New Perspectives Center for Counseling, San Francisco