Oliver opens her poem with a strong symbol of desolation; the desert. She writes, “You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting” (Lines 3-4). Oliver doesn’t want her reader to repent, but she strengthens this argument in writing out the image of someone walking through the desert on their knees. You can see the dry, hard, cracked earth and easily imagine the difficulty with which one would move through it. The desert is not always a place where humans thrive; it is a bleak and extreme environment for those not accustomed to living in desert climates. The desert is full of hard and prickly things, like rocks and cacti. If water is a symbol for life, the desert, at least in popular opinion, is absent of it. In beginning with this arid scene, we have a greater understanding of what Oliver wishes to move away from; the poem moves away from this barren land of punishment toward one that’s a bit more accepting of life as we know it.