My Place

Once again, one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems speaks to me about present circumstances:

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 your 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.

I am spending time with my dear L., who has always affirmed my basic goodness as a human being. I don't have to walk on my knees for this woman, nor she for me. We are who we are.

She was taken off the steroids and her mental functioning has improved greatly - turns out all the paranoia, mental hyperactivity and visual hallucinations were steriod induced. We've got her back again - for awhile anyway. She was moved to a lovely hospice facility since we lost electrical power during the storm.

I am deeply aware that the world goes on. So is she. She wants the news, she loves having the newspaper read to her. The world is still offering itself to her imagination, and she is willing to still go there and engage. It is a humbling experience to watch the body fail....Puts things into perspective and surely announces our place 'in the family of things.'

The dear woman still has a gleam in her eye when a friend walks through the door.