Wild Geese

The Wild Geese by The Chieftains:  

Ok so I may have let my love for the Chieftains influence this pick but oh well.

The poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver is as follows:

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                5
       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,                                        10
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,                             15
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.

The poem takes on a soothing, understanding tone. The reader is encouraged not to spend their whole life asking for forgiveness. The speaker seems to understand that people are most certainly not perfect and doesn't judge them for that fault. Mary Oliver's word choice supports this tone. In the second line, "walk on your knees" gives the reader the sense that the subject of the poem is beating themselves up over their faults. It puts an image in the reader's mind of unbearable pain, dragging your knees through the desert sand. But the speaker is telling us that we don't have to put ourselves through that just because we are not perfect. 
Mary Oliver uses imagery and figurative language with the personification of the world, calling to you like the wild geese (little simile thrown in there as well). She makes the world seem as though it is comforting us, making us feel included in the "family of things" despite our faults and bouts of begging forgiveness. She also uses descriptive imagery in the ninth line, describing the world moving on slowly around us. The world that we should appreciate instead of asking for constant forgiveness.
Oliver's style facilitates this soothing tone as well. The poem, for the most part,  is pretty straightforward and relaxed, as if she is speaking directly to us, telling us to lose our worries and feel the weight lifted from us like the wild geese. 
These elements all culminate in Oliver's theme, in which she advises us to live our lives not with the thought of repentance ever-present.

I will admit that this poem first stuck out to me because of the title it shares with a particularly great song by the Chieftains (embedded above). But after reading through it, it also coincidentally seemed to "connect" with me. It almost did seem to calm me as I read it, seeing as I'm such a constant worrier. It's a nice reminder that not everything has to be absolutely perfect. I don't have to constantly be fretting over something. I can feel the weight lifted sometimes. And the song by the Chieftains just seems to fit almost perfectly with the poem as well, no? So much so that its enough to make me wonder if Mary Oliver wrote it with this song in mind or vice versa.