jackie scutt writing
write-now
In October, each year, the pink-footed geese visit Aberlady in their thousands on the way from Iceland and Greenland down to the warmer climate of the Solway Firth or Norfolk.
This year, the numbers are down, but last year, I had the privilege to stand on the bridge at Aberlady and see the geese, at dusk, coming in from the fields where they had been feeding during the day to their resting place on the mud flats.
This is a poem about that experience.
October 2018
Wild
Pink-footed geese
Teem in thousands
As summer turns
Leaf by leaf
To yellow fall
Here
In our neck of the wild
We gather
To gaze
East and west
To catch the waves
Of flight-formation
But first the noise
Turns our heads
Stirs our hearts
Excites our voices
As geese gaggle
Right above us
Line after wavy line
Scribes a
Dense
Textured
Sky journey
Immersed in descending darkness
We watch
As this discipline
Breaks
Overhead
Turns to
Chaotic flurry
Each garrulous goose
Circling
Dropping down
Scrabbling for space
On the over-crowded sands
Black heads massing
In the dusk
An intimate moment
We stay quietly
In this sacred place
Hands touching
Feeling our own homecoming call.
13.10.17