~~~
the light is very early morning poor,
my still eyes crusty from overnight dreams,
but I can make out the individual
geese, browsing, pecking, having an early
breakfast at our AAA 5 star-rated motel by the bay,
on their way to Florida & Mexico,
traveling their own highway,
The Atlantic Flyway,^
stopping over for a few quiet nights and noisy days at
our isle's grassy plain
(ok, our lawn),
a way station where the room rates are low,
free wifi for their GPS systems,
the eats decent, reasonable tolerable too is,
the local variety of human company,
considered by goose cognoscenti,
as harmless
habitual digresser, I return to
the early morn scene where all quiet,
then the shrieking and the manic running sounds,
like the firehouse alarm but more akin to
rambunctious jazz music and the hip hop of
"so you think you can dance,"
for the red fox
in this light,
but a grey outline,
amidst the geese,
inattentively grazing just by the bulkhead,
a mere handful of feet
from the water, always an
escape tunnel handy
I know it is a fox
by its
airborne shape distinctive,
four legs and bushy tail clearly outlined
in the blue black grey atmosphere,
flying about a foot above ground,
in the mix of chubby runners at the starting line,
performing emergency takeoff procedures
a dramatic race for life and death,
something few of us ever witnessed,
or worse, experience, but nonetheless,
a daily occurrence mostly far
from our daily humdrum reality shows
this, more tale, than poem,
has its twisty turn,
a poetic trick de rigeur,
starting here...
a human fellow
I happen to know somewhat well,
grasps the concept immediate
his highway personal has brought him here,
to this exact raceway spot, and moment,
over a course of sixty years plus,
unbeknownst this was on his calendar appointments schedule
from the moment of his birth
he, voyageur, ******, witness, non-participant, but
just another airborne passenger, looking to plot, route
his last legs onto the red flag,
race-over signal, globally
the geese by far the wiser,
better planners,
than short sighted, foolish men,
who don't measure well the encroaching, narrowing distance
to their own mortality's terminus finale,
geese smartly keep handy escape hatches,
an alternative route
who will be my fox?
illness sudden swift,
a heart beat skipped,
the silence of cessation,
the unimaginable telephone call of accident,
a terrible swift sword heaven-appearing,
a surprising but ordinary
number early up,
a shocking shortening of actuarial tables,
after all, every fool knows,
poets are
humanity's statistical outliers
so here I am contemplative,
cussing up cursive scripting story endings,
varied new and unexpected,
poetic concepts each one more deserving,
wondering are their any geese,
like me,
who prefer the sudden death of teeth
over the slow molting of checking off
the tedium of passage rings of years of annualized aging,
until one morphs
into the last runner in his own 10k race,
tho at the finishing touch end his is the pace
of a passenger aboard his red flyer wagon,
about to overturn
who when, he,
crosses beneath the finishing banner,
hours after all the rested have
made their way to the
Presumed Safety of Wherever,
he crosses to silent applause of onlookers
all gone away
~~~
as for my lawned, learned friends,
the fox proved to be...
not as good a planner as the geese
~~~
this poem is a favor returned to new friends, poets here,
Jimmy Yetts,
who asks similar questions, and,
mark cleavenger,
a life guarding professional,
who tries to save us from ourselves
and succeeds
~~~
^The coastal route of the Atlantic Flyway, which in general follows the shore line, has its northern origin in the eastern Arctic islands and the coast of Greenland. This is a regular avenue of travel, and along it are many famous points for the observation of migrating land and water birds.
Shelter Island,
August 2015