Moose Visitation

As some of you know, my sister Wendy died suddenly on Thursday (5/28). She was 56.

Coming home from the Creemee Stand today, the kids and I saw this moose grazing in a pond near our house. Even in Vermont, a moose sighting has a magical quality, like something we've been granted to see. It was hard not to think of Wendy when we came across this creature, as if it was her spiritual "familiar", or her guide to the next world. Sigh.

Moose Visitation
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas

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.

--Mary Oliver, from "Wild Geese"