Silent poetry reading

I don't know if any other bloggers (there are far fewer than there once were) still do this or not, but back in the "before times" (before Facebook, before Twitter, before, I assume, Tumblr), people who wrote blogs - at least, many in the little circle of them I read, a lot of them women who were academics and/or knitters - did it.

Every February 2nd, in celebration of Candlemas, or Groundhog's Day, or St. Brigid's Day (which was actually yesterday), they would post a favorite poem, or one that had meaning for them.

And it was just....it was one of the Good Things, I think. I loved seeing what other people chose, sometimes they were poems I knew and loved myself, sometimes it was a poet entirely new to me.

But like some of the Good Things, it seems to have fallen by the wayside. Oh, in truth, only a few people really ever did it, but this year it feels like maybe I am the only one. But I am still doing it, to honor the memory of it and because it is important to me. (I grew up in a household where poetry was a thing. One of my grandmothers had a store of memorized poetry she could remember and recite. And I remember one of my favorite ever school assignments, in fifth grade English, of making what amounted to chapbooks of favorite poems of ours. Edited to add: and of course, my paternal grandfather wrote and even published some poetry. And I myself had a couple pieces in my prep school's literary magazine, one of which won an award from the school.).

I am posting again a poem I posted earlier this fall, but it is one that speaks to me this year. Considering all the losses and all the upsets of the past year, and how a lot of times it did feel like the world was crumbling apart around me. And how at times I felt that no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough, I wasn't good enough. And yet....I kept on going, because that's all there is to do.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver

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.