Geese
One of the first things I can remember:
being lifted by my father high to see the geese.
It was late at night in mid-November:
the days so short, fields beginning to freeze.
Now I live close to the sea in the west –
small hills and lochs, and birds on every side;
so many voices calling without rest
that often the house becomes a kind of hide.
And the geese. All day and all night they call –
crossing the fields, coming down on the pond;
voices haunting early dawn as still they rise.
Father, can you hear them? Through that strange wall
to the next world? You who gave me this bond
with geese, do you see them now with new eyes?