Geese Gone Wild or, Dear Mary Oliver

Dear Mary Oliver,

You wrote a poem about flying geese, and being soft. You reassured us:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

Well thank goodness. The other day I tripped on the hard city pavement in Manila, flying through the air and landing on my knees and hands. I would be terrible at repenting for a hundred miles, even though I sometimes try.

You told us we must embrace our humanity. You intimated that despair is normal. You said:

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.

In your telling, perhaps despair is part of a universal cycle. It, too, will pass. I also appreciated being reminded that I am just another animal. I am nothing special. I have the same wants and needs as kākou, all the creatures, not just the two-legged ones—how easily I forget. However, sharing makes the burden of despair lighter.

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.

How beautifully you remind us of these cycles, the larger context of our lives. In those words about pebbles and rain, you help us know our place, to realize that the planet is still moving, despite our human drama. What is my life compared to that of an ancient prairie? How does my miniscule concept of time relate to the many rings and centuries witnessed by our deep tree and pōhaku mountain family?

In describing the world at its most fundamental, you entreat us to trust that our place will come. By recognizing nature, we can find ourselves. There’s a comfort and constant in how Earth moves, and lives. Perspective.

Meanwhile the wild geese,
high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Well here where I am, the sky is full of opaque haze, smog like so many asthma attacks. Unless a heavy shower comes to clear the air, we go on home in its midst. And home is esoteric in general, a constant journey, a constant destination. We are always homing, though the way is sometimes rough and thick. I know you mean to comfort us, but it can be overwhelming.

Today typhoons rage and the Earth shakes with dramatic tremors. For instance. Today everywhere I’m supposed to go is forbidden and inaccessible because of floods or aftershocks or fear. I think of visiting the mountain and she begins to smoke and shake, and I think perhaps it’s not a good idea. Am I imagining, or having a nightmare? Am I isolated, or overexposed and laid bare? (Maybe they’re the same.) You tell:

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, I wonder about our place in the world. Our outsized human ego. Where I am, the land is not so gentle now. A typhoon becomes an exclamation point on quaking ground and canceled plans. We are humbled and we stay home, waiting for the “big one” on the 27^th floor of a shiny business tower in Makati. Perhaps you remind us not to take ourselves so seriously, to remember that we can be silenced or stilled by the ‘uwehe, ‘ami and slide of Papahānaumoku.

Tell us, Mary, Mary, is this what co-regulation with ‘āina looks like, is she matching our rhythm? Are we to rise up like the land, in the way of primordial tectonic movements? Are Papa and Pelehonuamea shaking us down so we wake up and become? Or are our elementals mirroring our hysteria, our persecution, our states of war, helping us move them through?

What would Aunty Pua say if she were with us?

A late thought came to me a few nights ago:

Remain soft and curious, not hard and brittle.
Don’t let fear, anger, or injustice make you impervious or invulnerable.

The lights in my hotel room flicker as I imagine Aunty Pua and Mary Oliver in that timeless place some folks call heaven. They are writing poems together, sitting under a deep and delicious mango tree and watching it grow. I imagine them telling each other stories of the places they loved, and sharing those certain narratives that shaped their being, their work, and their legacy. May their poetry carry us through our days, dark, thick, and light as they may be.

Photo taken 10/13/25 in Makati, Manila, Philippines