When Death Comes

I don’t understand the last line. What’s wrong with a visit? I’ve only just discovered Mary Oliver’s poems and they’re truly beautiful. Wild Geese made me cry 🙏🏼

Visit in the sense Mary Oliver intends here (I think) is to goto a place where you do not live. And this poem is about living in the world, not visiting it.

She say s "I don't want to end up simply having visited this world." I read "simply visited" to mean "only visited." She wants to be much more than a visitor. I believe she wanted to live life as fully and deeply as she could.

This is a wonderful question, because we are in fact visiting, if we see ourselves as eternal souls in temporary bodies. Like other responders to your question, I think Oliver is speaking about living fully as an inhabitant rather than a tourist.