wild geese By Mary Oliver

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 your 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.

More summer 2007

Pic 1: Fun with getting sheep back in the pen. Dad and Kristin "coax" it to its home.

Pic 2 &3: The 3rd annual chicken "get to know what you eat" day.

Pic 4: Clouds over our place - afternoon storms are what I live for.

Summer...

Summer is going. Here is our recent haying endeavor. A success - especially from the cab watching Kristin and Jenny do all the work!

Harvest approaches in a few weeks - hail storms are skipping around the country side. Tonight there was talk of baseball sized hail! Glad it wasn't here but I'm afraid someones crops are hurting.

Second pic, captured by the catlike creative genious of Kristin Bailey, is my corn which is way past "knee high by the 4th of July" - my father says results in a fine corn crop. And that is good.

Hope all are well.