A post shared by ecofolks (@ecofolks) on Jun 7, 2018 at 5:38pm PDT

For 83 years, Mary Oliver graced us with her words.

On Thursday, January 17th, 2019, she passed away at her home in Florida. She died of lymphoma.

Mary Oliver became renowned for her magical poetry, heavily inspired by nature and animals. One such poem is “Wild Geese,” one of her most famous.

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.
~

~
You won’t be soon forgotten, Mary.