The pasture empty now almost five years, the barn where a storm peeled back part of the tin roof, late March and the dusting of a last brief snow settling the dust of hay mold and stall straw.

                                 swallows swoop and swerve

                                 reaching for each farther curve

                                 until they are gone

Packing this and not that, finally choosing, leaving behind what has already been lost.

                                   forgetting the dream

                                   but all morning the old birch

                                   keeping last night's moon

A last walk and a solitary goose circles above, something not often seen, being essentially sociable creatures, and voluble, part of a common community that seems never settled but always arriving and leaving, each saying its part of the passage. 

                                    between two seasons

                                    one goose coming and going

                                    neither here nor there

I feel it my avatar and some part of my heritage; that there is something that, living long enough, separates us from our kind, though we still keep saying what we seek, listening for some answer in the distance that perhaps will not come again.

Whatever is to come now is there . . .

                                   near the horizon

                                   free of ground and gravity

                                   far pines in the mist