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Poetry meme, first ganked from jonquil.

This is still my favorite poem. I heard it here: http://www.spiritrock.org/, in a Valentine's Day talk by him: http://www.spiritrock.org/html/TSched_Jack_k.htm. He used it as an example of the way Vipassana meditation is, how you don't have to work hard at meditation (walk on your knees, etc.), all you need to do is be, and always come back to the now, to your breath, and have an open heart. As a friend once described, Vipassana is the Unitarian of the meditators. It's certainly unlike Zen, which can be very rigid about The Right Way to Meditate.  So there's that to love about it on top of how wonderful the poem is all by itself.

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