Tom Hennen: "Spring Follows Winter Once More"

Lying here in the tall grass
Where it’s so soft
Is this what it is to go home?
Into the earth
Of worms and black smells
With a larch tree gathering sunlight
In the spring afternoon

And the gates of Paradise open just enough
To let out
A flock of geese.



"Spring Follows Winter Once More" by Tom Hennen. Text as published in Darkness Sticks to Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2013).

Art credit: "Crowd," photograph by Mike Hollingshead. Caption: "1.3 million geese came to Squaw Creek [National Wildlife Refuge, Canada] this spring—more than the population of any British city except for London." The birds were returning to their summer breeding ground in Central Canada.