The Solemn Geese

The sullen October dawn was a captive of the sky.  The landscape was shrouded in the gray mist of a cold rain.  My prison cell felt cold and damp.  I could not actually see the rain nor feel it, but in the distance I could hear the rain rip as car tires flew over the wet surface of the nearby road.  Closer by, in the luscious green grass between my window and the triple barbed wire security fence, I looked for signs of the rain.  There was a single scar upon the otherwise delighted grass where a tire cleaved too deep.  In it the rain sought its fill, the surface danced in agitation.  A light atop the fence issued forth, dully reflecting upon the rain stippled surface of the scar.  The green grass outraged by man’s recklessness, rejoiced in the abundance of God’s love.  In the distance car lights were chased by opaque ghosts on eighteen wheels.

The ever changing sky lightened, revealing the distant hill, the saddle, the ridge.  The silent trees swallowed the cars and the ghosts.

Above, the singing geese announced their arrival in a solemn procession.  I watched as they descended and gently alighted upon a carpet of delectable food.  They bowed their graceful necks in prayer to their creator.  “…A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.  There is nothing better for geese to do but eat and drink and find enjoyment in their toil.  Our father, whose spirit is in the heavens… give us this day our measure of grass and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that would shoot us down for sport… deliver us from evil.  Amen.”