migrations

sheila packa

^

  • two wild swans
  • came in the dark hours
  • by star light far into the journey
  • to lend their wings
  • traveled north over ten rivers
  • flew over moss riven
  • boulders broken from the mother stone
  • over the fens
  • and spears of birch
  • through the wordless
  • winds and migrations
  • flew over graves
  • and lovers reaching blindly
  • through sheets of northern lights
  • two swans with feathers of falling snow

^

  • in synchrony and angles
  •  across forests
  •   over rivers
  •    below Venus or
  •     clouds invisible borders
  •      carrying nothing
  •      besides star memories
  •     along arteries of the body
  •    into dark interiors
  •   through the moon's phases
  •  calling to each other
  • on lovers' endless roads

^

  • if you answer
  • when you hear their call
  • geese in loose and shifting lines
  • from land to sea to cloud
  • cross the evening sun red
  • on clouds of plum
  • and rivers inlaid in gold and flowing
  • upon the slopes
  • cross a border
  • if you need to leave
  • in every country
  • we are born to the same body
  • wind inimitable
  • invisible forces change us
  • beyond reach
  • if you make the sky your home
  • —it isn't easy, you can't bring
  • those things—
  • wrap in those lines
  • cross with them

^

  • wind turns the body
  • and ground falls away
  • geese unafraid of silence
  • or empty sky
  • must go must go must go
  • reach into the wind
  • move as clouds rimmed with sunlight
  • or dark cloud of rain
  • need to follow their flight
  • like ice in the spring
  • that once held the river
  • light surges in the veins
  • searches for the beginning
  • of a journey yes
  • music you haven't heard
  • didn't know you needed
  • opens deep
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