when i was a waitress

When I was a 20 year old waitress, after my day shifts ended I used to go to this huge hill to watch the sun set through the forest. I would get there just when all the geese were gathering at the bottom of the hill. When I arrived, they would be eating, and as the sun sank lower and lower, they slowly moved up the hill, still eating. Within minutes I was completely surrounded by them and the dulled tearing sound of a hundred rounded beaks pecking at the earth. When the first layer of geese reached the top of the hill, one or two would start calling. A few would assemble amidst their dining peers, and the few would take off into the sunset, wings beating close to the top of my head. They continued in this way for about 25 minutes, until all the geese had taken wing and I was alone in the autumnal Pennsylvania twilight.



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