The Geese Will Believe This Autumn

Although an older piece, it still resonates with me. This is the title poem from my 1993 book of poetry The Geese Will Believe This Autumn. When I wrote this poem my wife and I were living in a small house on Jamesville Reservoir. The wildlife was spectacular.

The Geese Will Believe This Autumn

I pull my wrists apart

enough to flick some light,

enough to answer the phone

come alive for the first time

in twenty three years.

I stand in breath. One ear

listens for a voice I could

never recognize, one ear

hears the cool September flow

of reservoir night.

It's my father on the phone;

colder months are all that lay

ahead. He a man always foraging

for warm thoughts to winter on,

never knowing the ice my mother cut

getting me out of her belly:

There's no warmth in a son

born to a December blizzard.

Still, he has a voice

that takes me by the hand,

that says white rabbits

chased him through a dream

spitting my number in his ears.

He says he's been living

in the sun, laying low

all these years, haunted by childhood

memories of crows kicking up the snow

until their feet turned to blood.

And I believe him

in the way geese will believe

this autumn.