Sunday, May 3, 2015

They find me






My river walks are so good now, deep in the lost world of sewers and geese and walking trees and mad and generous graffiti, that it could take many small essays here to tell you about them.

I have been reading a book (Father Goose) much involved in the affairs of migratory geese. This has made me acutely aware of the many geese I have been encountering down on the river. I stop stock still to watch a pair bank down to the river. I have been reading longer, far more knowledgeable accounts of their suitable anatomy and their mastery of flying than I would dare attempt to articulate here, but it makes me alert to the guiding spear of their long necks and the hundreds of tiny adjustments of their wings and bodies as they ease to the water.

Their great honking is more unmistakable.

When I get to the University my head is full of geese. I climb a long flight of stairs to the river road. I cross the road to a mighty staircase leading up to the heart of the campus. On the grassy hill there sit two giant turkeys.

Not a jealous bird the turkey, they welcome me with an astonishing placidity. I climb into the grass and squat with them awhile.

Nothing can ever be owned, and the wild things belong to no one ever. And yet it remains. These are my turkeys.





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