Wild Geese
by Theodora Goss

The cries of the wild geese are spring,
are returning
warmth and growth and light,
are the promise of apples ripening on the branch
and crickets singing in the summer night,
are hope in flight.

Every year I hear them I am older
and yet reborn –
each year is another step closer to the last, and yet
also, somehow, a new dawn,
a new awakening beneath the eternal sky
that arches over us all,
the mother through whose blue body the wild geese
northering call.

(The image is a woodblock print of wild geese by Ohara Koson.)