Birds of a Feather

 

One summer

   I went every morning

      to the edge of a pond where

         a huddle of just-hatched geese

would paddle to me

 and clamber

      up the marshy slope

         and over my body,

peeping and staring–

    such sweetness every day

        which the grown ones watched,

      for whatever reason,

serenely.

   

Not there, however, but here

       is where the story begins.

            Nature has many mysteries,

some of them severe.

   

Five of the young geese grew

    heavy of chest and

bold of wing

while the sixth waited and waited

   in its gauze-feathers, its body

    that would not grow.

    And then it was fall.

 

And this is what I think

   everything is about the way

I was glad

for those five and two

    that flew away,

       and the way I hold in my heart the wingless one

     that had to stay.

 

 

( Mary Oliver )

 

 

~ Thank-you Sandy! ~