The sky is so much bigger out here....

I was outside on my knees in the dirt, building a retaining wall out of rock harvested from the property for the planned front garden of the story house when I heard the geese. A fiddly breeze lifted sounds to me: a barking dog, the drone of a small-engine plane, the faint base notes of the music Chris and David listen to when they work--and then the geese. I heard them before catching sight of them. Their song brought me to my feet, had me backing up, scanning the sky that was in late afternoon a shade of endless blue. The geese came over the roof peak, their flight pattern a wishboned white ribbon limned in shades of gray and silver. I was lost, watching, hearing their ancient cries. In awe, not thinking in words, really, of the eternality of their ritual, but feeling it more as a resonation ... that it has gone on since time began and will continue long after I am gone. Seeing them, hearing them, never fails to touch some basic note within me, one that is as deep as bone, deeper even, and I understand, if only in that moment, the concept that is inherent in the word "eternal" and all else, all other noise, whatever there is of strife, is stilled. I feel joined to them and to the sky and the breath of the breeze that is from the very air that we--the geese and I--share.

This poem, from Mary Oliver, is one of my favorites. That line: Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air. . . 

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.