A free verse poem about hearing the call of geese returning north. |
The night is crisp and clear. The full moon shines brightly. Rusty and Pepper are busy sniffing scents left by recent passersby on the doggie highway. I am thinking the night air finally has lost the frozen teeth from its bite. A faint Honk! Honk! catches my ear. As I look skyward, a flock of geese, V-ing northward, are silhouetted against the full moon – amazingly picturesque! Again their honking reaches my ear. This sound of migrating geese resonates to my very bones, awakening deep within my soul some prehistoric feelings of hope and joy at their flight northward, which presages an end to the misery of winter. These harbingers of spring are once again, as repeated thousands of times before, promising humans their salvation from winter's brutal grip. Over past millennia – before centrally heated buildings, before sealed and heated transportation, before lightweight, moisture-proof clothing – how Man must have looked with enormous envy upon the geese’s escape southward from months of freezing weather, from months spent huddled closely around a little-warming, small-comforting fire, weighted down in thick coats of hide, cursing the penetrating cold, praying to survive until the return of the geese, the return of life-giving warmth. That ancient flame, its roots now little recalled, flickers yet within modern Man to be ignited into blaze by the haunting call of the geese overhead. Fly strong. Fly fast. Fly safe. Know well Man has been eagerly awaiting your return north, for you ride the very crest of the springtime weather that shall return beauty to the barren earth. Your present migration north gladdens Man's heart, which thaws and soars one time more upon hearing... the call of the geese. Please drop in: http://www.gillelands.com/poetry/ |