The thirteenth goose.

A part of the universe in which we find reality is not always joyful and the inevitable encounters with mortality are very real and very moving. We each deal with those encounters in our own way. I have recently experienced such an encounter and my response to it has been very personal and unique to only myself and I prefer to let it remain so.

Please consider one of my previous posts written in December of 2006:

Early this morning a flight of Canadian geese could be seen over the river in their familiar “V” pattern, but this time something was not quite right: instead of even pairs, there were only thirteen. These beautiful big birds mate for life, and if one loses its mate, it will usually take another the following year, but seeing an uneven number in a “V” during the winter has always produced a feeling of sadness for me.

So, for the thirteenth goose, this:

The beat of gray wings
on a cold gray sky,
and a space in the “V”
for a time now gone by.
Your life-mate is gone
and the winter is long:
there’s a void in your life
and a tear in your song.
I know your sorrow,
or if sorrow’s not known,
then loneliness;
feathered grief of its own.
When the grass next turns green
and the gray sky turns blue,
a new life-mate, then,
is my fain for you.

It is now time for me to resume public contact through “Montana Outdoors” and to express as best I can my encounters with the beautiful things in the natural world. Please understand my absence.