by Mark Koslow
A year gone by
and I saw her again.
A year ago I noticed her
with her mother, brothers and sisters.
slower than the others,
a little limping gosling,
soft yellow-green down,
glistening sun in the silk,
a color more spring than marigold.
She cried to her mother
her foot twisted sideways
at the joint, crumpled.
If it were my foot it would be like
walking on my ankle,
with my heel twisted off the ground,
all the weight of my body
upon a joint not meant for the ground.
Could she live I wondered?
The river was too high to cross.
She cried for her mother again
Her father standing over her too.
Her four siblings running and swimming.
She could not keep up.
But her mother waited for her.
Her father waited too.
Should I capture her and bring her home?
She got up, fell down, got up again,
and made it to the water.
She swam well enough,
"I'll see how she is tomorrow".
But when I returned
I could not find her.
Will she die with such a foot?
Darwin says she cannot live.
Survival of the Fittest.
A year passed. yesterday I saw her again.
Still calling for her mother.
A full grown goose now.
Proud and standing on one foot.
Is that her mother sitting nearby?
the one who nested near the sycamore
and whose nest failed?
The foot is deformed the same way.
Ankle turned inward, no heel,
all the weight on the joint.
It is the same bird.
She still limps badly.
But she is Alive.
All Praise to Life.
She is with her tribe.
About 80 birds in this flock.
I know most of them.
She was standing in the wetland
where nearly all 80 birds
have been born.
Some were born across the river.
But they are all an extended family
who know each other voices,
know the excited calls of mating,
the lattice of their community,
the calls of their homeland.
Their's is the place I call Hero's.
I'm so glad she is alive.
She walks in great pain.
But she has avoided the hunters,
unethical men. of malicious ignorance.
She avoided the
redtailed hawk
and the fox
and though some feathers are missing from
other geese playing too rough with her
she is intact, adult: free.
She must have flown with them
when they all went south
when it got cold in January.
She listened to their honk and hink
against the blue sea of stars
they navigate by.
She knows Ohio, Virginia
maybe the Yamasee river
Maybe the high clouds in the
Smoky Mountains. The Bayou.
She lives in an infinite world
in the silken interlace of her community
a net of relations that flies
across the continent.
Despite her foot,
She has proven Darwin wrong.
the weak can survive.
She is stronger than hunters
stronger than science
Better than evolution.
I have few heros
But she is a True Hero
and my heart sings
out songs for her
most humans can't hear.
