What Rough Beast | Poem for January 28, 2018

Marjorie Moorhead
The Wisdom of Geese

Do they know, before they go?
That they’ll stick together;
watching out for one another?
A feathered band of brothers-and-others.

Are they willing to circle the wagon
if one becomes a drag on
group flight?
Such a beautiful sight,

the shaped formation.
Flying in unison to shared destination.
Soaring as one to reach far-away shelter;
fleeing not “shelter in place” and “active shooter”;

they’re seeking climate that can sustain their group.
Cooperation, camaraderie’s the coup.
Do they know, before they go
away from ice, sleet, snow, what it takes to let peace grow?

 

Marjorie Moorhead‘s poem “Starlight in My Pocket”  appeared in the HIV Here & Now project annual run-up to World AIDS Day in 2017. Her poem “Wandering the Anthropocene” is included in the anthology A Change of Climate (Independently published, 2017) edited by Sam Illingworth and Dan Simpson to benefit the Environmental Justice Foundation. Her poems will appear in the anthologies Birchsong: Poetry Centered in Vermont,  Vol. 2 (Blueline Press, 2018) and in the Opening Windows Fourth Friday Poets collection forthcoming from Hobblebush Press in 2018. Marjorie lives in New Hampshire near the Vermont border.

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