Wild Hope

 Wild Hope

The Canada geese break the morning silence

With throaty cries that are songs of greeting

As they break the glass water of the pond,

Sending small ripples, shoreward, toward my feet.

I stand under the bare boughs of a maple

That stretches across the pond for the sun

In a heliotropic cambre line,

Strong and longing, a natural posture.

I move back in deference to these lives

Who would hug the shore if I would leave it,

Who greeted me in love, that I might leave

Them to their wild peace, where life finds a way.

I cleared a space that geese find the same– 

Sung in wild notes, wild hope’s prior claim.

This is one of the poems I wrote following a day of work on the invasives project at Woodlake in Woodbury. Nature would love us back if we would love in the first place--and then go home.