late geese

I heard them while I was outside planting daffodils and moving terracotta planters under the house for winter. A lonesome sound, those cries echoing off the mountain, muffled by cloud, then clear as someone talking in the same room. I finally saw them, a perfect vee, and so high up I couldn’t even begin to count them. Mostly I love the routines of my life but when the geese fly overhead, sometimes I feel tethered. Like Issa, who wrote,

the hoe’s a curse

I’m thinking tonight…

wild geese calling

One moment, wishing for flight, and the next, entranced by a forgotten geranium, untouched by last week’s frost!