Jane Mead: "The Geese"

slicing this frozen sky know

where they are going—

and want to get there.

Their call, both strange

and familiar, calls

to the strange and familiar

heart, and the landscape

becomes the landscape

of being, which becomes

the bright silos and snowy

fields over which the nuanced

and muscular geese

are calling—while time

and the heart take measure.

"The Geese" by Jane Mead. Published in Poetry (October 2010). © Jane Mead.

Art credit: "Geese Across the Silo," photograph taken on February 21, 2014, by © Jayaretea Snaps (originally color). Caption: "Snow geese at Gunnison Bend Reservoir."