WILD GEESE CROSSING
My Lord, what a morning! The clothes
Flap in my face, stiffening as I pin
Them on the crusted line. Pine branches
Toss snow all over the patio.
Across the cobalt blown-glass
Bowl of sky between the house
And the mountain, a wedge of geese
Have etched themselves arrowing north.
Like squeeze toys they eject staccato
Cries in the wind’s swelling fist
That drift down to our ears, tinny
As the notes of tongs on toy xylophones.
Forty years younger I stand
In a college classroom, teaching assistant
To a gaggle of World War Two veterans
Bickering over the symbolism of wild geese.
Take your notebooks to the marshes and the mountains
I should have told them. Set your sights
For the next four decades and then write
The message of spring and fall migrations.
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