Becoming a Wild Goose
When you are drawn to churchyard shadows more than most
and glimpse above a wishing bone of geese winging north
with cackling song of gale-blown rigging, let your wanting
soar upon a thermal wind in line, becoming something
greater; then crawl into the hedge, the mother bowl
of her nest, curl knees to chest, head to knees – small –
to sleep, to dream, embalmed in smells of down and moss
since smelling is almost being; and dreaming, let frost
crisp its brittle caul around your skin, slumbering there
in aqueous quiet till dawn when the cowl wherein you curl
to sleep – is breached and grins its smile at waking skies.
Now! Now you sense magnetically how and where to fly.
Zoë Green is a writer based in Thuringia. Her debut pamphlet, Shadow Child, is published by Hedgehog Press later this year; her first collection, Map, Compass, Key will come out next year with Valley Press. She has been published by The London Magazine, Under the Radar, One Hand Clapping and Poetry Salzburg Review.