"Wild Geese" and Diabetes

After a long day (or week or month) of struggling to bring blood sugars into balance, when I am exhausted from playing pancreas and feeling inadequate to the task, when I cannot face the judgment of the numbers on my glucose monitor- I have found Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" brings me back to a gentler awareness of my relationship to my body. Her simple and subtle brilliance asks me to remember my connection to the larger world, and, thus, move away from my own suffering. I experience a rare physical peace from reading this poem.

                                                            Wild Geese

                                                           by 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.