Reading for Care: Taking Perspective with Wild Geese

Inspired by our continuing practice of attention, today we turn to a poem that widens the frame gently. All you need is a copy of the poem, a pen and 10-20 minutes quiet time.

A Gentle Note Before You Begin

This space is for reading and reflection. It is not therapy. You are free to pause or step away at any time. Take what feels steady and leave the rest.

Arrival

Before reading, look up from your screen. Notice something beyond you: the sky, ceiling, window light, a plant, a distant sound. Take three slow breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Let your shoulders drop.

Encounter the Poem

Read Wild Geese slowly once. Read it again, even more slowly. Let the words move through you without trying to agree or disagree.

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

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 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.

When Literature Widens the Frame

Journal Prompts

1. What line felt like it was speaking directly to you?

2. Where does the poem shift your perspective: from self-judgment to belonging, from isolation to connection?

3. What image in the poem makes you feel part of something larger than yourself?

4. Is there a sentence you might carry with you today?

Write gently. You do not need to explain.

Perspective Practice

Mary Oliver does not solve anything in this poem. She simply reminds us.

Notice:

• Where does the poem soften your inner voice?

• Where does it enlarge your sense of place?

Taking perspective does not mean dismissing your feelings. It means seeing them within a wider sky.

Extending the Experience (Optional)

If you wish:

• Step outside for five minutes and look up.

• Write one sentence beginning with: You do not have to…

• Send the poem to someone who may need its steadiness.

May you remember that you belong to the family of things.

 

Reading for Care: The Plant on the Window Speaks

Inspired by the Memoir Writing Workshop by Women Writing last Saturday, February 7, we begin Reading for Care: How Literature Holds Us, a new blog series that centers on attention and awareness to the beauty of words and how it holds space for readers like us. All you need is a pen and a paper (or a notebook) and 10-20 minutes time allotment for journaling.

The instructions are simple: Read the poem for the week. Sit with it. Write responses in your journal.

Note:
This is a reading and journaling space, not therapy. Please feel free to pause or step away whenever you need to.

Here we go!

Arrival: Notice this photo and stay in the moment of noticing. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Do this 3-5 times.

Encounter the poem, The Little Plant in the Window Speaks by Annette Wynne.

The Little Plant on the Window Speaks

by Annette Wynne

If you had let me stay all winter long outside,
Long, long ago, I should have died.
And so I'll live for you and keep
A little summer while the others sleep—
A little summer on your window-sill—
I'll be your growing garden spot until
The rough winds go away,
And great big gardens call you out to play.

When Literature Holds: Journal prompts 

1. What did you notice, visually, in sound, or in feeling, as you read? 

2. Which line felt steady or comforting? Write it in your journal. 

3. What image from the poem stayed with you? Did it bring a memory, 

a place, or a person to mind?

Extending the experience (only if you wish or if the spirit is nudging 

towards generosity), you can:

1. Share a similar photo on your socmed account.

2. Do something artistic or creative.

3. Read more poetry: The Human Touch, Weighing the World

Thank you for dropping by. May you find shelter in what you notice.

Poetry: What I Know About Cats

this is what i know about cats

they are quiet geniuses,

masters of sleep, seemingly lazy,

unbothered by the rush

of people and the world.

but they see beyond the edges

of what we notice,

and so we let them be

loving them gently,

softly,

steadily like the moon rise

because when they sense

your heart needs a place to rest,

they will come,

and they will stay.

zarahG 12.07.2025

Poetry: it only takes two colors

it only takes two colors, blue and yellow

though chemistry has a name for them i keep it simple mix them in a small white dish the paper awaits, 200 gsm of virginal capacity i wash the colors, looking murky green

on cotton paper

today’s subjects: a coin from BTS Thonglor Station, loose change from a basement café near Myeongdong Cathedral, small bottles of cologne and liniment now empty, and flowers from the soursop tree Uwan uprooted all memories now— remembered in light and shadow, preserved in indigo hue

Poetry: fireflies

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Poetry: Love in Fragments

 

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Zine Review: Strange Weather in Manila by Alina R. Co

Dear Ali, 

Reading your zine felt like being spoken to by grief itself. The weight of your lines, the tenderness of your laments, I know them. You carry your mother in every syllable, in every stanza and space. It is the same way I carry mine in the lines, spaces and stanzas of every day. She left in October last year, but absence has a way of staying present.

Nostalgia when grieving is both sweet and savory, and yet, it left me aching for things that will never be. You captured this in “Butter” and “Ginataan”, Ali. But I am amazed at myself. How I endured reading your poems because, like you, I do find the weather in Manila strange, not only because of climate change, but in part because of the question you asked in your poem: Will the sky ever be clear again from one horizon to another?

I ask the same question, having lost not just my mother but my mother in law and dear good friends in the children’s book industry one after another. The weather is not only strange. It has totally changed. But  you know what, it will clear up. And it will darken again. And it clears and darkens once more. Like waves swaying. This is grief. And in my case, I just stand there by the shore, breathing with waves as the wind tugs them back and pushes them forward.

Your poems have now become my companions as I hear what Rumi once offered:

“I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, ‘It tastes sweet, does it not?’ ‘You’ve caught me,’ grief answered, ‘and you’ve ruined my business. How can I sell sorrow, when you know it’s a blessing?’”

It unsettles me, how grief can taste sweet. How sorrow can hold blessing. And yet, this is what your writing teaches me too. That grief is not only loss, but also a strange companionship. A mirror. A bridge.

I return to a poem I wrote on September 3, 2021. Then, it was simply memory. Today, it reads back to me as inheritance. What our mothers and grandmothers passed on, quietly, in kitchens and songs. I offer it to you as a companion piece, one candle beside another. One writer walking alongside each other. 

Nanay Leony

©️zarahgeeh 9.3.21

Garlic, ginger 

Salt and pepper

Onions, of course

 

What Nanay Leony calls

A concoction to ward off

Dis-ease

 

She sings

An ancient tune

Sounding out the words under her breath

While stirring the pot

Of chicken broth

 

The aroma fills the kitchen

It floats over the sala

Out to the veranda

Where I sit watching the neighborhood kids play in the rain

 

The smell, the sounds

They find their way into my heart

She calls for me

And I know it is time

 

To be healed

To be loved

And to live again for one more rainy day

While eating the flavors of earth and air

Grief, your poems remind me, is never just sorrow. It is also this: memory steeped in broth, song folded into silence, healing carried forward in small ways. I walk with you in this, Ali, trusting that somewhere between sorrow and sweetness, we’ll find what remains.

With love and kinship, in the spirit of Women Writing,

Zarah 💜🙏💜

Poetry: At low tide

 

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Poetry After Pepito

The storm has passed

The morning sky is clear

No red sunrise

but only the moon

A vestige of its full glory

Pagbusilak ng Bukitkit

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Poetry: The Sun Climbs Slowly

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Post Pandemic Poetry: Loyalty is the lamp

 

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Writing Weekend at Brittany Hotel BGC

 

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Poetry: The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider

 The Patience of Ordinary Things

By Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Book Spine Poetry 2022: On the Road

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Creative Therapies 101: Finding Grace in Everyday: Poetry

 

Poetry: February

 

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