my interpretation of Mary Oliver's wild geese.

Mary Oliver’s wild geese

What could it possibly mean? It could mean a lot of things to different people. In my eyes, in this particular piece she is talking about people as individuals and people as a society. As we all know from experienced, the society is like a game field. A field where we as people have to live the way other people wish.

Mary Olive is here to proof that wrong. It’s not right to be someone you’re not, especially when you are being someone else for someone else. It’s wise on the other hand to be proud of whom you are because it is important and will lead you somewhere.

“You don’t have to be good,

You don’t have to walk on your knees”

Here she tells us that we don’t need to impress someone and suffer in the process, like having to bow down to a person (not literary) that one is not comfortable to be with. She encourages the readers to look forward to life’s battles even if there were things in life that we regret. She advises us to accept and love the soft animal inside our bodies.

In the next few lines I noticed that she is brings out the importance of time,  things that weren't in place would eventually fall in place and this could all happen in time. She talks about patience:

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

 Meanwhile the world goes on.”

When things go wrong we tend to scatter ourselves about a lot, here Mary Oliver insists on being calm and patient enough to let it on and finally move on. She shows that even though thinks get stuck with our lives, the rivers still flow; the mountains still high a symbolic to dark clouds with silver linings, in other words, hope. Hope that life doesn't end where it gets stuck but it just has to go on.

Coming to the significance of the title “wild geese” firstly, it’s because she mentions it towards the end of the piece. Secondly, I feel she speaks of these geese in a slightly negative tone. The blue sky symbolizing an individual’s life is polluted but the crowd of wild geese, knowing geese, the kind of birds who run, chasing after someone’s life, is similar to the wild geese mentioned here by Mary Oliver.

These things come and go, she says and “the world offers its imagination”just like the wild geese’s very existence in the eyes of an artist. It all makes us who we are, strong and brave to face wild geese again.