An Offering for Goslings

An Offering for Goslings

Consider their plight in the sky

    and the height of the night

        descending and how right

now at this quiet idyl

    it might be enough like this

        to pry you out

of your winter: they cry from

    the cells of themselves, send

        their sound out into that scrim

of cloud and then fly right

    through their somehow guided

        and requite call.  What is

it like to glide into your own

    calling?  Can you (have you ever

        wondered?) feel it in 

your scalp first your cheeks then

    and deeper beneath the skin

        into the mantle

where it all began?  And then

    fly on and on and on into it

        while the multiplying are still

and quiet beneath the skull,

        spiraling into the yolk and 

            albumen and finally (some bit

of them) calcified: the delicate

    wet and then wind-dried

        shellac-like shell incubated

in the tall grasses.  And hearing with-

    in them all those other calls: mother-

        hums maybe, moved into inside

and still ever into the goose-

    children who will, once raised and having out-

        witted fox and ermine and otter-

call out in the same way

    through the same but intimately

        plied, year-long wide sky.  Alive.