the country (billy collins)
i grew up with this poem. i heard it for the first time curled up in the back seat of my parents’ car on a roadtrip and it stuck with me. i think it might have been the first poem i ever loved. the personification, the grandeur of the mundane scene, the humor, and the indifference to rhyming.
wild geese (mary oliver)
add a tally to the ’left sobbing’ board. the sound of geese now always brings to mind this poem for me and my day is always better for it. i perceive the imagery is so intense, rapid, and surrounding - it reminds me of the feeling of standing on a dock as a kid by the ocean and watching the clouds move /so/ fast over my head. it isn’t just the perceived speed, for me, it is the visceralness of it all. it isn’t close and intense and intimately visceral like many poems i cherish - instead it’s the rawness of the wide world - it’s the feeling of being awash in a profoundly uncaring but painfully beautiful world; there is so much room and so little time to love yourself.