Geese at Olcott (after Yeats)

“You say they have flown away, […] but all the same they have been here from the very beginning” D.T. Suzuki

I only saw them once.
I didn’t bother to count them.
Nor did I ask about their matrimonial habits.

But I liked them: the plump bodies,
The elegant almost arrogant rise of the necks
The way they kept a certain distance

Waddling faster and faster as I approached
Until inevitably they rose into low flight
That ended on the next patch of lawn.

Their consternation too was eloquent
A ceaseless cascade of disgruntled
Grunts and hisses and honks—

calling to mind their wild cousins who cross continents
North to south, south to north. Sometimes,
Hearing them, I’ll run outside to gawk—

Loving best the stragglers, the geese who fly late
At night, late in the season, high overhead—
Between us miles of clouds—

But still they call and still I listen—
Those loud lovely encouragers—
All I know of transcendence.

Christina Hauck
Wheaton, Illinois