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Clay Road

poetry of Emily Isaacson

Canada Geese by Emily Isaacson


All fly, and toward the North, for it is spring,
above our wings, there is a sun-filled sphere,
where the night echoes the moon
and the fire echoes the wind,
the snow fills every mountain
and the rain, the sea—
we travel boundless, here;
our cries, now unrelentless, ring.

All fly, then northward, steady on,
it is our v shaped form that maps the skies
with steady beating of our now harbinger eyes,
will you join with us, one and all—
as the sun will fill the bright noon’s pall.

As the light fills the meadows of Canada with down,
each martyred watershed from Vancouver Island
to the Yukon, spirited hears
our honking masses, landing cries
of freedom on the muddy iridescent banks.

We do not cower, break our ranks with fault,
but we have taken to the heavens’ sweeping finish,
and the lacquer of earth’s rusty varnish,
with courage from of old—
let our biology turn bold
as light with salt:
in our handsome breast, untarnished,
and beneath our webbed feet
the country grows warm, and warmer still,
and the goslings follow sweetly.

 from Hallmark: Canada's 150 Year Anniversary