Many of you know Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese, but today I offer a different poem about geese, and hope.
We all know that haunting sound when migrating geese fly overhead, when we hear that collective body of travelers moving purposefully to a destination. Who can help but look up?
You've likely seen geese in the fields -- they are masterful at finding food.
Barbara Crooker not only notices these natural behaviors, but uses them to reflect on her life.
Sometimes, I am Startled Out of Myself,
like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my own life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. These geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.
(originally published in Barbara Crooker's book Radiance, Word Press, 2005; also found in Poetry of Presence, an anthology of mindfulness poems, 2017)
Comments