On Single-Parent Migrants
Canadians by the millions, as most everybody knows,
slowly migrate southward every winter, back and forth,
Keen to nest in milder climes from fall to early spring
when sources for their sustenance, because of snows up north,
Fade to where they all but starve, and predators more desperate
often steal the lives of those who can’t, or do not, leave;
But those who’ve lost their lifetime mates for what is deemed a sport—
the victims downed by shotgun shells—are those for whom I grieve!
I remember clearly when the first gigantic V hypnotized me,
winging through the clouds when I was five.
Uncle Marty picked me up and, pointing toward the sky, said,
“Every year around this time, son, flocks of geese arrive
“To once again remind us of the colder weather looming.
Those, that is, who make it past the hidden hunters’ sloughs.
And then again return in spring to let us know that summer’s
just around the corner, and—if fortunate—in twos.”
Looking back to 5 years old, I wished he hadn’t told me!
I’d yet to see a “honker” fall, and—chilled by what he meant—
I was deeply bothered learning migrants risked the wager
of actually never getting home on every trip they spent!
Now… I accept your argument: “You down your geese for eating”—
despite they’re actually being raised on farms to fill that void.
But every time I picture one that’s gliding down—unwittingly—
beckoned by those damn deceptive decoys you’ve deployed
To lure them ever closer to the point where being killed is
I’d say, virtually guaranteed, I’ll always wonder why
anyone would rather kill these harmless handsome birds
than simply stand and quietly watch them decorate the sky!
Well, sitting in my den last week, trying to write a poem,
my thoughts were interrupted by a flock of pausing geese.
I quickly noticed two were swimming someways from the others,
each with fledglings hov’ring close. I counted six apiece.
The yet-to-freeze, two-acre pond behind our country home—
a respite used by countless wildfowl (hopefully twice a year)—
Helped me to remember why I feel the way I do
when a clearly “single-parent” with their children wandered near.
I sensed a desperation in the way this mom (or dad?)
led her frail dependents to the shoreline of the pond,
Guarding them from danger—though without her lifetime partner
’cause some cold, misguided person with a shotgun broke their bond!
Mark Stellinga is a poet and antiques dealer residing in Iowa. He has often won the annual adult-division poetry contests sponsored by the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, has had many pieces posted in several magazines and sites over the past 60 years, including Poem-Hunter.com, PoetrySoup.com, and Able Muse.com—where he won the 1st place prize for both ‘best poem’ of the year and ‘best book of verse.’
Mark, I suspect there are divided views on your poem. When we lived on the farm in South Dakota, I looked forward to our large extended family getting together for Thanksgiving and Christmas with a dinner table filled with venison, ducks, geese, and pheasants. Not having much money, we savored what our hunters gave us. I understand many may not appreciate this, but we often relied on wild meat to help us through the long winters. I feel for single human parents like you do, but sense this is written against guns (I took your use of “shotgun” as a metaphor for all guns). If this is the case, I do not share your sentiments.
I’ve absolutely no problem with ‘guns’ per say, Roy, and I, too, hunted for foods when I was young, but I do have a problem with dropping geese, ducks, pheasants, deer, elephants, tigers, lions, etc., etc., not to mention hooking game fish like Northern, Walleye, Marlin, etc. merely to decorate man cages and use their pelts as — ‘got ‘im in Zimbabwe’ rugs, which, IMO is far too often the case. Antler chandeliers are not one of my favorite household accessories. It’s what some people do with their gun that inspired this piece. I suspect we’re generally on the same page, and thanks for you input –
I can agree with you on wanton shootings to assuage egos.
That’s nice to know – and I thought as much – take care – -:)
Each fall we mark the shots of the beginning of the goose season, and soon after the cries of the widowed Geese. Here’s a poem about intact flocks:
Hearken, the wind-cleavers – B. canadensis
Taunting the ice-teeth – of winter in leaving
Long as the water flows – long as the snow delays
Northhome and nestsite – to flee south and skywards
Sky-high and sky-wide – bugling calm retreat.
Hearken, the wind-cleavers – B. canadensis
spring by themselves – to the slumbering northland
Crying the season – like dogs on the heels of
Calm wool-white winter – that wrapped down the earth.
Sky-wide and tree-low – more than they sing alone
Long ages song-strong – furrowing fields of sky
North-hopeful, nestwards.
– “And in this annual barter of food for light, and winter warmth for summer solitude, the whole continent receives as net profit a wild poem dropped from the murky skies upon the muds of March.” ― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There.
What a thoughtful poem, Mark, with the narrator an integral part of the narrative.
Thanks for the read.
I’m in a lot of my narratives, Paul, something I’ve very often done since I began penning verse in 1962.
I’m in probably 300 – 400 at least I suspect – tends to make ’em seem more real I think – and you’re welcome for the read…
A very complimentary read, Fred, in pretty much the same vein as my rhyming lament – thanks for commenting.
Mark, this is a truly unique poem — I mean that in the best possible sense. This piece is presented with very matter of fact language and yet it is deeply moving — possibly because it is understated. Sometimes less is more, and sometimes backing into a subject (as you do here with your flock of geese interruption) offers the most organic basis for discussing it. Had you set out to write a more weighty poem — Ode to a Dead Goose, or something along those lines — it would have devolved into bathos instead of pathos — the difference between an eyeroll and tears. You have told a story which I found to be thought-provoking, moving and an authentic slice of life — one told with simple yet graceful rhymes and excellent pacing. I really enjoyed this poem. You are a natural-born story-teller.
Thanks so much, Brian – and I’m extremely flattered to be christened a ‘natural-born story-teller’. I am definitely that. I always use a few when I recite at care centers and they go over VERY well. There are more than 200 ‘stories’, both long and short in my newish thumb-drive-book of poems, and another very sizeable bunch yet to be exposed! I sincerely enjoy the pithy interpretations of my pieces that explain to me what I’ve done that makes them what they ‘are’. I have little sense of what I’m accomplishing when I pen them as I do, but the feedback truly fascinates me, particularly yours. I’m as self-taught as it gets. Thanks again…
You’re so welcome, Mark. I love your authentic, organic work. And I love the way people react to it. You certainly don’t need to solicit comments in order to demonstrate your worth the way those who are less genuine might.
Yes, Mark, your well-spoken meditation from the writing desk garners sympathy for the geese. That’s something I haven’t felt, as I live where they’ve come to stay for the winter, and too many of them aggressively occupy every little bit of green space with water. When my son was a child, one sauntered up and bit him in the shin. Therefore I never thought to contemplate a single-parent Canada goose with “frail dependents.” But the mother- or father-feeling must certainly be there by nature and instinct, and we human parents can imagine the sudden, senseless loss of a cooperating partner. The grief you state forthrightly in the second stanza becomes real for us, especially when you go on to describe how the hunter is virtually guaranteed sporting success against birds not equipped to escape. A good evocation of sympathy which is worth feeling.
Thanks for your input, Margaret, and geese are notorious for being a bit aggressive at times, as one of our young nieces will readily attest. Learning that Geese, like many animals mate for life is what moved me to give them this attention. Every Fall & Spring I get to watch several small groups make brief use of a small pond not far from where I write as they migrate each way. Their loud ‘honking’ as the drift down to land is an anticipated sound I’ve grown to relish. Thanks again…
From the clever title to the closing line this poem had me hooked. For me, the image of the migrating geese serves as a literal and a symbolic view on vulnerability, loss, and the human capacity for harm… even toward beauty. I love these lines – they touched me deeply: “… I’ll always wonder why / anyone would rather kill these harmless handsome birds / than simply stand and quietly watch them decorate the sky!” – your words capture the poem’s point perfectly – that contrast between destruction and appreciation. With these lines you manage to transform the flight of the geese to a glorious work of art. The closing image of the lone parent leading the fledglings is devastating… a powerful and heart-touching finish to a thought-provoking piece. Mark, this lovely poem is an instant favorite of mine from your vast collection. Thank you!
Good morning, Susan, and I’m so glad I “hooked” you with my animal-lovers’ piece. One of a few of mine that focus on the same perspective concerning the vulnerability of wildlife. When I visit a close friend we typically visit in his workshop where, a few feet above my head, a HUGE, wired-together display of deer antlers hangs, and I try my best to not glance up and let it pull my resentful-trigger. His family has, at least, always dressed them out and smoked the venison, and the massive glob does reflect about 50 years of deer hunting in an area where they are, thankfully, plentiful. Still… 🙁 “Hi” to Michael.
Mark, this is an affecting and beautifully wrought poem—deeply compassionate without tipping into sentimentality. The image of the lone parent goose and its fragile young quietly hammers home the toll that even selective hunting can take on bonded lives. Your closing lines linger, urging readers to look upward with tenderness rather than dominion.
Still, I also think there’s room for balance: for every wild goose taken by a hunter, millions of domestic fowl… chickens, ducks, turkeys… meet their end in factories for food. Set beside that reality, the hunter’s table seems small and respectful by comparison, often part of an older rhythm of providing for one’s family rather than consuming for convenience.
The power of your poem is that it reminds both sides, hunters and observers alike, to honor life by understanding it.
Very well said, Mike, and I agree completely, I honestly do, but appreciating birds and deer, etc. as much as I now do, I’m perfectly content to let the family-providing-hunters and the food factories supply the grills. We’re on the same page on this, my friend. Take care, U 2 –
here’s what seemed to be a widowed Goose: 15 June 2002 – Canada: Quebec: Nord-du-Quebec Region: Station 42:Lac Mirabelli, 15.5 km N Riv Pontax I/JBHwy. 51.87224° N 77.39648° W TIME: 1735-1900. AIR TEMP: 23°C, light overcast, Beaufort gentle breeze. HABITAT: sandy Willow/alder/Aspen boatlaunch lot, lakeside Spruce woods, turbid brownwater lake. OBSERVER: Frederick W. Schueler. 2002/140/bb, Branta canadensis (Canada Goose) 1 adult, seen. persistently hanging around boatlaunch lot. This Goose didn’t leave the boatlaunch site while we were here. We can walk up to within 3 m of it. It ate all the supper scraps we offered it, including, overnight, the bones and remains of the cooked fish (though not the Lemon peels that accompanied the fish – it also doesn’t eat Taraxacum (Dandelion) blooms). It pulls up grass and herbs when we’re not feeding it, but there’s only a small area to feed from. We suspect it is a park Goose from the south mated to a northerner that was widowed in the spring hunt. “She” looks longingly at a nest-like pile of Spruce branches with Goose feathers in it.
Here in Massachusetts, where our Second Amendment rights are perpetually threatened, it is golfers who dislike this bird more than anyone else, due to the way large flocks of them turn fairways into fields of goose-crap where no one would want to walk, much less chase after golf balls. I’ve heard that they are not good to eat, but I don’t know whether this is true or not. Do people actually hunt them? I’m sure coyotes do.
North & South Dakota, Illinois, Missouri and Nebraska are all favorites for dropping several thousand geese/year, Kip, but most, so I’ve been told, need to be quite heavily seasoned to be enjoyed. I quit golfing long ago, but I don’t remember having to chase off too may honkers on the links, though their making a mess sounds entirely plausible. 🙁