Mary Oliver, one of America’s most significant and beloved poets, is best known for her work exploring the beauty and awe of the natural world amidst the harshness of life.

This piece, originally published as part of her 1986 collection Dream Work, is widely considered her most famous. Every time we run the scene where Viv stands outside at the end of Part Three, this poem and the image of the geese come to mind.

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 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 died of lymphoma on January 17, 2019, at the age of 83. A few years before she passed, she did a rare interview with Krista Tippett for On Being. In that conversation, she reflects on her life, her relationship to nature, and her creative practice.