Poetry: Closing the Cottage

At the end of an October day of

draining pipes, hanging storms

and bolting windows, shutters, doors,

we piled our boxes in the car,

the trunk, the seats with all our

summer store of leftovers,

of what we would recall

on winter nights.

When suddenly the air was filled

with beating wings-a thousand

geese above the lake, and

oh, the crying, crying.

High against the twilight sky

a storm of wings that V-shaped,

swirled, fanned, re-grouped

but always crying, up and down,

and down and up, surrounded

all that little lake with elegies

of sound.

And then we saw it:

paddling fiercely

flapping its one wing

against the golden glass

as if to rise, to rise, but

falling back, again, again

while overhead the million wings

kept crying as if calling it to

come.

And we remembered how

last week our neighbor, old and lame,

had caught  a bird while he was

feeding corn he threw on shore;

those wild birds trusted him.

But then he grabbed the little one

so tight he crushed it half in sport

and half in joy of exercising

what was left of his poor fading

power, he knew that he could have

his way with nature still,

he had dominion

like his Bible says.

HA! he laughed.  He laughed

out loud, again, again,

and let it go.

Our sad dominion doomed,

we  watched the flock fly

round and round, forming

and unforming, diving, rising,

high and low above the lost one

left behind,

till finally in one last swoop

the great V turned

and with a sudden silence

headed

south.

Grayce Scholt is a retired English professor from Mott College who writes art reviews for the Flint Journal. Her book of poetry, Bang! Go All the Porch Swings, is available online from Amazon and locally at Pages Bookstore in downtown Flint.