Okay. If you read Monday’s posts regularly, no doubt you noticed that last week and this, I broke a poem into two parts, the second part appearing today. I like writing long poems. In fact, I’ve been crafting an epic poem that runs over 200 pages, and I’ve been writing and revising for over fifteen years. This work may never be published, but what does that matter? Going forward, as time and inspiration permit, I’m going to try my hand at two, three, maybe even four-part works in this Almanac.
This week’s poem is Part 2 of a two-part poem. The first part was posted on 18 June 18, along with background and introduction. So, with that I offer Part 2 of “Goose Walking.” Please “hronk!” if you like it.
Goose Walking
Part 2
(Part 1 of this poem appeared as week ago, 18 June)
Only a few creatures partner for life – penguins, swans, the albatross
but chances of a lifetime union, not so good with us
Wolves and dolphins and these gray geese espoused all their lives
with no churches, laws, or mandates, two by two they survive
Why so few brave this coupled state cannot be known
Why some embrace their twinned lifetimes, a mystery deeper still
Perhaps with just one other a place exists that endures as always home
Yet when the other flies the dark edge, the one left needs fly alone
For our Canadians, consider how many gray, full-blood siblings hatch across the years
If geese held reunions, what a crowd in the sky! What joyful, feathered tears!
But few such fetes have been witnessed – rather across the centuries
they rise to fly, to take a mate, to brood offspring
and like all of us they die . . .
in the meantime . . .
Canadian Goose ambles down Forest road
Canadian Goose waddles side to side
Canadian Goose pads along foregoing flight
Why she appears just here I cannot know
All that can be said: We each come. We each go
We may again chance to meet each other
But with passing time, we will not recognize one another
Still, in all the vees of geese overhead
partners abide with each other until one of them flies ahead
But who can say what happens after?
Geese ask not, honking their celestial laughter
Background and Explorations: See “Goose Walking – Part 1” and make associations and connections with Part 2, especially as the two parts relate to one another, and geese “honking their celestial laughter at thoughts of the afterlife. Hronk! as one Almanac writer commented.
Jack Pine Savage
Part 2 continues with thoughts about the mating for life thing with humans being runners-up. But geese have such big families. Two parents are needed. Humans just have one offspring at a time so the well-off caveman would sweep up any available mates to keep the race going.
ReplyDeleteThe poem returns to your goose on the forest road and thoughts of geese reunions and flights bound for heaven. Celestial laughter, that's how it sounds overhead, but not down in the honky-tonks that I wander.
Hey, I never said humans were “runners up.” The other species I list probably out do us. As usual, my view of our species is less than complimentary. As for “big families,” goose families have few needs and those are met without monetary requirements. Hmmm . . . “keep the race going” . . .reminds me of The Red Queen, and also of the tendency of most species (I think) including humans to spread their genetics far and wide. And oh, if we could only tap into that “celestial laughter,” eh? As always, appreciate your comment.
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