Early this spring there was a goose nest below the studio. It was a tender exposed thing at the pond’s edge that I checked on each day. Then, one day the eggs were lost, the nest strewn apart, and the adult geese lurking on the pond. My emotions took me by surprise when that clutch of eggs was lost. Now with the trees as witness, there are several families of geese that wander closer and closer to the house and garden. I see and hear the geese everywhere.

The Wild Geese

They are not wisdom
or freedom or history.
They are not what’s lost.
They are nothing but wild geese.
I can hear them everywhere,
wings pushing down metaphor.

—Victoria Chang, from The Trees Witness Everything, Copper Canyon Press, 2022.