Geese, Landing

Even as they come in,
determined above all

to land on the lake, they
circle it, like dogs in a final

clearance for sleep. They push
against their own calculations,

refusing to admit, to the very last
minute, the accuracy of their inexorable

conclusions—measurements of the wind,
of their feathers, of the limits of light at dusk.

The last act in the air is a stall, a shutting down
that contradicts the furious muscled backwash of wing,

the odd, almost delicate, lowering of their feet, the haughty
manner of a dilettante testing a drawn tub for that dangerous

adjustment to the mortal world. Synchronous, yet
unrehearsed, all their pumping wings seem pointed

toward this moment—a glide, a stillness—a release
from which no engine could quite reverse.

The point, of course, is the quiet
affirmation of the given, the

natural curtain to all
their noise.

Copyright © 2006 Michael David Madonick All rights reserved
from Tar River Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission