Pink-footed geese in flight (Photo by Steve Garvie, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/rainbirder/8083466318/)

Dear Readers, I have been thinking a lot about wild geese since our discussion yesterday, and I was delighted to find the poem below, by American poet Rachel Field. I love the simple charge of it, and the sense that sometimes you have to leave before you really want to, which I find strangely moving. See what you think.

Something Told the Wild Geese
by Rachel Field

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go.
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered,—‘Snow.’
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned,—‘Frost.’
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,—
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.

And I suppose that it’s impossible to talk about wild geese and poetry at the same time without mentioning Mary Oliver? This one is so familiar to me that I could (almost) recite it, and yet it seems fresh at every reading, to me at least.

Wild Geese by 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.

And how about this one, by Martín Espada, a Bostonian poet. I was moved when I read it, but for a real treat, listen to it here. You won’t regret it, I promise.

After the Goose That Rose Like the God of Geese
Written by Martín Espada

Everything that lives is Holy.
—William Blake

After the phone call about my father far away,
after the next-day flight cancelled by the blizzard,
after the last words left unsaid between us,
after the harvest of the organs at the morgue,
after the mortuary and cremation of the body,
after the box of ashes shipped to my door by mail,
after the memorial service for him in Brooklyn,

I said: I want to feed the birds, I want to feed bread
to the birds. I want to feed bread to the birds at the park.

After the walk around the pond and the war memorial,
after the signs at every step that read: Do Not Feed The Geese,
after the goose that rose from the water like the god of geese,
after the goose that shrieked like a demon from the hell of geese,
after the goose that scattered the creatures smaller than geese,
after the hard beak, the wild mouth taking bread from my hand,

there was quiet in my head, no cacophony of the dead
lost in the catacombs, no mosquito hum of condolences,
only the next offering of bread raised up in my open hand,
the bread warm on the table of my truce with the world.

Over to you, lovelies? Any favourite swan/goose poems out there? Do share!