Angle of Geese

Painting by Greg Messier

Angle of Geese


How shall we adorn
Recognition with our speech?--
Now the dead firstborn
Will lag in the wake words teach.

Custom intervenes;
We are civil, something barks:
More than language means,
The mute presence mulls and marks.

Almost of a mind,
We take measure of as loss grows;
I am slow to find
The mere margin of repose.

And one November
It was longer in the use,
As if forever,
Of the huge ancestral goose.

So much symmetry!
Like the pale angle of time
And eternity.
The great shape labored to climb.

Quit of hope and hurt,
It held a motionless worry,
Wide of time, alert,
On the dark distant flurry.

Navarre Scott Momaday