And so I've come to these hills
to have a long look
at the earth
and what it does to itself.
After all the years of harvest,
clapboard towns,
and muscle, it's time to see
what ice can do
all year long. Between
the long gashes
of freeze-brittled
sedges, crocuses
push through
the frost
with the blindness
and valor
we thought was love. For
a week now
the geese
have been rushing south,
all the misery of sea-ice
at their backs. It's huge,
how they pass,
shadows grazing
the slow Columbia
as it makes its long,
winding stab
toward the sea.
The earth darkens
huge under the flight
of geese. Its order
is always asking for a name
always asking to be destroyed.
I go at it aslant, not reading,
not speaking to myself or anyone else,
counting the geese fly past
one, one, one, one, one.