Post-Agent Break Up

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.

 – Mary Oliver

My writer friend has told me I have a week to wallow in self-pity. My daughter has told me NOT to wallow, but instead get up and get going. A critique partner has given me an assignment: massive revisions of the manuscript PLUS a re-write of a short story. My writer friend has said she’d help me put together a collection of my short stories for submission to contests, prizes. My daughter wants me to continue to query—oh, and also read a draft of her latest novel. My writer friend is also sending me a scene she just wrote while in the doctor’s waiting room and between driving her grandkids to school, practice, whatever.

I have my own doctor appointment next week.

Plus I can hear the birds singing and supposedly the Northern Lights are wavering. There is still much to do and life keeps going on. So, yes, I’m flummoxed about what to do next per my writing career, but there’s always the small things that remind me that I’m not done yet.