Duly Noted

My friend sent these words from Mary Oliver to acknowledge the mystery of birth and humanity. I like that the spirit "would rather plumb rough matter" than float. I picture Misha as a feisty little spirit. Fierce and entering the world "like a stitch of lightening." All poignant imagery to keep in mind during labor. Poem (the spirit likes to dress up) The spirit  likes to dress up like this:   ten fingers,   ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest  at night   in the black branches,     in the morning in the blue branches  of the world.   It could float, of course,     but would rather plumb rough matter.  Airy and shapeless thing,   it needs     the metaphor of the body, lime and appetite,  the oceanic fluids;   it needs the body's world,     instinct and imagi...

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. "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver from Dream Work published by Atlantic Monthly Press © Mary Oliver