Canadian Geese

Martin Willitts, Jr.

 
 
The noisy beginnings, the leaving stretching the sky, 
the interminable returns,
 
they come & depart in an right angle taking the treetops off
as a wedge into a last echoed song,
 
this ritual happens twice yearly, never the same, never
changing, always knowing when the change is coming
 
they announce this change, breaking the icy clouds,
like laying eggs, like hatchlings breaking free in taps & cracks,
 
they remember what we forget: 
things are the same & different, always in flight, always nesting,
 
we cannot lift out of our bodies, nor see the land slowly below us,
nor call the changing of the seasons so it will change like they can, 
 
this is how love begins, the calling & responding,
this is how we should migrate & mate, and dip into water,
 
taking turns leading & following so neither tires,
in a formation of co-operation so none are left behind
 

Martin Willitts, Jr. lives in Syracuse, New York. His tenth chapbook is The Garden of French Horns (Pudding House Publications, 2008) and his second full length book of poetry is The Hummingbird (March Street Press, 2009). Recent poems appeared in Blue Fifth, Parting Gifts, Bent Pin, New Storm at Galesburg and other stories (international anthology), The Centrifugal Eye, Quiddity, Against Agamemnon  (anthology against war), Protest Poems, and others.

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