I was walking home from the gym, listening to my iPod. (Allison Kraus, followed by Dolly Parton, if you must know.) Became aware of a man walking nearby so, like the good wary urban resident that I am, I unplugged, announcing to the world that I was Paying-Attention-So-Don’t-Mug-Me. I instantly heard an amazing noise, cacophonous yet unified. First, I thought of grackles, but we don’t have grackles here. I knew they were birds, flying north, but the sky was dark. My potential mugger — really, a lovely man, I was just being cautious — found them in the night sky, an eerie white-ish line. We both stared until they disappeared from view.
So, of course, I thought of this:
Tell Me a Story
by Robert Penn Warren
[A]
Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.
I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.
I did not know what was happening in my heart.
It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.
The sound was passing northward.
[B]
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.
(c) somebody!
Tomorrow, next week, a year from now, a decade from now, I will go back to this entry and be happy.
And that’s how memory journals are supposed to work.
We have thousands of Canada geese that live year-round in the DC area, but we see migratory flocks too. This morning while driving to Reston from McLean, I saw an immense flock flying north in a most unorthodox formation. Instead of the traditional V, they were spread across the sky in the shape of a question mark. A portent of some sort as they passed over Washington?
Well, being Canada geese, they’re apparently pretty happy with their health care and can’t figure out what the problem is here.
Thursday the ducks were crowded into the pond (so recently frozen) at Baltimore Country Club, just below Eddie’s. I mentioned it in class and one of my juniors said, “Call Holden, they’re probably his.”
Darling boy, he read.
Every morning when I’m walking the dog I see lots of geese. There will be a big gaggle of them, about 5 minutes later, another group, and so on. I’ve decided that somewhere in southern CO there is a huge enclosure and every few minutes the door is opened to let the geese out to fly north.
HEH HEH, How incredibly Southern! The reference to a poem from a man talking about his childhood in Kentucky (was it kentucky), to listening to bluegrass. On that note (living in Georgia) I AM SO HAPPY THE BIRDS ARE MOVING NORTH! To me it means that slowly but surely Summer may someday come back!
Watching Matilda and Buddymiller tear up the back yard, door wide open, I puzzle over the swamp jessamine’s collapse from the back fence. Tinkerbell flew by. Jackie says the big snow did it and it’s a bug.
I’m on the Western slope of Colorado and must see those same geese that Zelda mentioned above. My dog, a dachshund so very close to the ground, is just fascinated by them.
Yes, yes, seeing and hearing the geese is wonderful but seeing my first Robin this week really made me smile.
Anyone else feel the least bit skeptical of this little stretch of beautiful weather in Baltimore? March has always been such a devious month in these parts.
Here in the Tidewater region of Virginia, snow geese winter in a wildlife preserve near Back Bay. I used to ride horses at a barn near the refuge; we’d see the geese leaving every morning to forage in the fallow fields nearby and returning every evening. In between, we got fighter jets from the Naval Station.
OFF topic but Laura’s husband is the feature in NYTimes Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/magazine/21simon-t.html?ref=magazine
I was wondering where he was all these weeks . . .