Messenger

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver (1986)

In another poem intricately linking the human body to nature, Oliver addresses the manmade pressure of being “good” and of the falsities of piousness in religion. The pain of being human under these pressures is juxtaposed against scenes of nature that inspire feelings of freedom and flight. This poem reminds the reader that they are in fact an animal, an integral part of nature, and that what isn’t natural are the societal constructs people impose upon themselves and one another.

"Good-Bye" by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1832)

Although written in 1832, this poem was published in 1899 as part of a collection of Emerson’s early works. In this poem, Emerson bids the world farewell and says he is going home. Though the reader quickly comes to understand that home is not a house, but instead is the Earth and the land in which the speaker wishes to be buried beneath when he dies.

"Gliding O’er All" by Walt Whitman (1881)

As part of his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, Whitman explores the veil between humans and the natural world. In his brief poem “Gliding O’er All,” Whitman pierces through the boundaries between human and nature and touches on an intangible source that can be felt but not proven—an all-encompassing, wider net that holds both humans and nature in tandem with one another.