wild geese

One of the few instances of relative normalcy in recent weeks has been driving to Sissy's in Middletown Springs for their wonderful takeout dinners. Some of you have been there. Heading south towards Middletown Springs I pass the headwaters of the Ira creek. As I drove past a field at the Shapiro horse farm, I saw a Canada goose sitting on her nest along a quiet section of the stream. I remember seeing that same scene last spring, presumably the same goose.

The return of the wild geese in the spring, heading north, is one of the highlights of the season here in the north country; the unimaginably large v-shaped patterns cutting through the blue sky. Their cries are the essence of wildness.

I never realized that some of the geese actually stopped nearby and raised their families here instead of on the Canadian tundra. You have to keep looking. You never know what you're going to see and learn.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile, the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.