Dream Work by Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred mils 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 adn the clear pebbles of rain
are moving across the landsdcapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains adn 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.