Hunting the Spring

The chatter of February has already begun: the cheering on of each other by the geese as they fly through in enormous flocks. I have been noticing them over the wide skies lately, as I walk through the winter grass across the hillside. And then, just this morning, I heard one such flock as I was waking, while light dropped in a great block through the curtains. The sounds and light brought me to this poem.

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There’s a clamouring of geese,
Raucous along the horizon
Beneath a bight blue sun
Of petulant February.
Their wild spear points form
And shatter and form again;
They careen across the skies now,
For they are hunting the spring;
And the blue sun rides the heavens
With them, tumbling the clouds;
His coming thrusts them aside
Like frost upon the grass,
Which I scatter with my feet
As I tread, footstep by quiet footstep,
Through the bright gold morning,
Waiting till the hunt brings back the spring.