Goose, Del rey Lagoon. Photo (c) 2010 Richard Beban

March

Walking in the woods, thinking about the coming war,
late snow sifting down, I startled some geese
in the nearby cornfields; they took off in squadrons, bugles
blaring; the whump, whump of their wingbeats, rotors
in the wind. I was thinking about Li Po’s “Grief in Early Spring,”
and I grew colder, knowing what lies ahead, all those sons
flying off with bright fanfares, returning home in silence.

Here, the Jordan Creek cuts through the marshes, rushing
over stones, over pieces of ice. And the snow keeps on falling,
softly, lightly—the coverlet a mother might settle on a cradle,
as she watches her newborn sleep to make sure he’s breathing,
his small chest still moving, up, and down.

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

Barbara Crooker’s work has appeared in magazines as diverse as Yankee, The Christian Science Monitor, Highlights for Children, and The Journal of American Medicine (JAMA). She is the recipient of the 2006 Ekphrastic Poetry Award from Rosebud, the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. Her books are Radiance, which won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; Line Dance, (Word Press 2008), which won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence; and More (C & R Press, 2010).

Barbara offers the Friends this place biography: I live in the Lehigh Valley, rural northeastern Pennsylvania, in a small development set in an old apple orchard. Behind us is a small nature preserve, where the Little Jordan (a creek) runs. The poem “March” is set here; also “Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself.” When I lived in upstate New York, it was a magical thing to hear the wild geese call, especially at night, on their way north, but now, they stay around here all year. Down in this wetlands is where I take my daily walks; I’ve seen pileated woodpeckers, great blue herons (there’s also a small pond), ruby-crowned kinglets, eastern bluebirds there, plus the ubiquitous white-tailed deer, chipmunks, and groundhogs (“der grundsau” in Pennsylvania Dutch). Once, I saw a black bear, and a red fox family lives in the hedgerow behind us. In the thirty plus years we’ve lived here, more and more farmland has been lost to developers building McMansions.

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