If I can’t get out on a walk, I read Mary Oliver. The effect is similar. Breathing slows, I look up. I feel perspective and peace. I hone in on the repetition in “Wild Geese” - Meanwhile - “Meanwhile, the world goes on.” Meanwhile - while we run in anxious mental loops, while we get lost in the repetitions and the mundane chaos - the natural world continues on in all its steadiness and ease. “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, / are heading home again.”
Mary Oliver loved to go on long solitary walks around the Cape in New England. She watched the tide for hours on end. In and out, in and out. She listened to the geese flying south and she prayed earnestly while counting sparrows and watching the clouds. She is a poet of deep attention and quiet.
In her poem “When Death Comes” Oliver celebrates the endless wonder she finds in the world: “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
I hope this Born of Wonder Sound Escape allows you to get lost in the quiet peace of nature and to remember your place in the family of things.
Many thanks to my husband Chris Marquette for his wonderful guitar playing throughout this episode.
Poems in this episode:
Wild Geese
Six Recognitions of the Lord
Mary Oliver: "Meanwhile the world goes on"