In January, the Geese

in their long strings every morning
in the pastel sky twining
south and west and east,
towards the fields of stubbled barley
and dry grasses and withering
winter wheat, every evening returning
all degrees of north
to the shallowing stock ponds
and the little flows in the coulees
that every day diminish, in the morning
loud as crowds of playground children
set free from the multiple darknesses
of rooms, at sunset more quiet,
honking to stragglers and the lonely ones
widowed by hunters, and intent on shelter
from fox and coyote, the betraying
waxing moon. This year
they never left us, despite September
and October howling blizzards
that stole autumn’s last ripening
with a grave’s depth of snow,
and winds that ripped siding
from barns and twisted pivots
and toppled cottonwoods a century
old whose trunks no six men holding
hands could circle. The ground
had not yet frozen. Nor has it since.
The winds grew warm as April
and melted all but the hardest drifts
packed deep in the caraganas. The iris
has put up new leaves among the old
that never lost their green. Buds swell
on relict lilacs whose calendars
equate the warmth and rising light
with spring. And it may be. The owls
are already calling for their mates
and staking claims to hollowed trunks
and hawk nests whose former occupants
are still absent. It’s supposed to be bleak
midwinter. Yesterday I heard a meadowlark,
an evening grosbeak, the great horned’s
amorous pleading, wild caroling of geese
before dawn when I am out on the stoop
feeding the barn cats, who are almost
certainly pregnant too early. I wish
I could trust this disastrous shift
of temperature, make peace with it
as the geese have done, so many of them
already gathering choicest sticks for nests.

​

from the Chapbook of the same title, winner of the 35th Anniversary 2021 Comstock Review Poetry Chapbook Contest, available now! Click on the book cover in BOOKS section for ordering information