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Instead of writing about it all, these two poems:

In Place of All the Poems about Departure, Lessons, and Ends
--Jenn Habel

I had an old life that kept repeating.
I was the shell drawn off and on
the more or less same shore. But not
just "drawn" or "tossed" or "drifting"
for I was also the flower

Comments

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You may know them both intimately already, but these two by Mary Oliver have ushered me intact through some otherwise murderous internal moments:

Wild Geese

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.

---

The Journey

One day you finally knew

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I lovelovelove wild geese:
you only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves... (!)
but the other is new to me. I think it might be the next poem to sing me through.
Thank you.