Winter Geese

After Mary Oliver

Christmas morning came and went
and still our pond is peppered with geese,
the sky alternately filled with their
rusty-hinge wings and their incessant honks,
harsh and exciting.

If Mary Oliver was right, and their
south-bound invitation is simply to
love what you love, perhaps it’s okay to
love the north, the cold, and winter too.

The soft crunch of boot on snow.
The magic of visible breath.
The sudden pink-on-blue of morning.
The wild wind reminding you as urgently
and frantically as the geese that
you are, in fact, in this moment,
alive.