An unidentified speaker directly addresses readers, telling them there is no expectation placed upon them to be good. That the speaker is specifically taking about “good” in the sense of morality is made immediately clear when the speaker also asserts that there is no expectation placed upon them to seek penance for any sins they have may have committed by crawling across a desert.
After telling readers what they do not have to do, the speaker reverses course and informs them of the one thing that is required: remembering that underneath all the evolutionary progression, humans are still just animals made of hard bones and soft skin. With this in mind, they should become attuned to what that primal animal part of their being tells them is really necessary for existence.
The speaker suddenly shifts course completely, asking readers to make a fair trade. If they share their stories of despair, she will share her own. Before such an exchange can take place, however, the speaker observes that nature won’t be listening. The speaker may care about the reader’s despair and the reader may care about the speaker’s despair, but the sun and the rain and mountain and the rivers and everything else in the world that is not human literally won’t stop to listen no matter how awful the circumstances the that led to despair.
Another sudden shift has the speaker noticing wild geese high in the bright blue sky have taken to flight and are heading back home after having migrated for the winter. This sight spurs the speaker to more philosophical contemplation as well as the desire to reach out again to readers with advice. She tells them that it doesn’t matter who they are or the circumstances of their loneliness, there is a great big world out there calling to their imagination. This call to the imagination is as loud and direct as the squawking of the wild geese and all that is required to hear it is to listen for it. To look up at geese soaring overhead is to witness animal instinct in action and that action is a great adventure. The lesson from the speaker to the readers is that learning to listen to one’s natural instincts is the path leading from despair and loneliness. Humans need to understand and embrace the fact that they, like the geese, are instinctive animals. The difference being that the geese naturally follow their instincts while humans obsessively fight against their own.
