A Different Migration

MIGRATION
(By Harriet Brown)

All fall you watched the geese fly south,
a soundless movie through the bedroom glass,
their long plain marvelous wings beating,
warm-blooded, creaturely, willing themselves
into their own features. Days after you stopped
speaking, you eyes stayed on that gray sky.
When there was nothing left to hope for,
still the last light in you lifted as they passed.

And now, of course, the geese
are coming back, flying in slow twos
and threes, in sure unbroken lines across
the spring bleached sky as if they know
for certain something that we don't.
I wonder if, wherever you are, you know it too.

The seasons are marked by the honking of geese in the sky. They are marked by other things too. A packed vehicle, an empty room, a quieter house. They return, but each return is different - and every leaving another step on the journey. * o

A Different Migration