Samantha S

When I listen to the recording of Mary Oliver reading Wild Geese again, it’s for Eli. “You do not have to be good” You don’t even have to be GOOD! You certainly don’t have to “walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting”! I scream from far behind you. Stop! Wait! Isn’t that great news? You do not have to. As if I could have read him one poem and fixed it all, saved him from the torture of his mind. Grief can make a person want to be that naive. Someone might need you someday. That doesn’t sound like enough but it becomes. It would have been, eventually, if you had heard that you do not have to be good.