Out of this light into a greater light.

    James Still

They pass more often now, these last to leave,

Gathering from frosted fringes of pasture ponds,

The cemetery lake where mourners no longer

Linger to feed them, the still stream shallows,

Blending in with gray days and the low clouds,

The deep quiet now the summer birds are gone,

Never at night, but tonight I hear them crossing,

Unseen and more urgency than ever in their calls

And in their calling me to listen to their passage.

And then - O and then the ambient light from town

Reaches up and reflects off the white undersides

Of their wings and they slowly circle in it, as though

Both the air and the light were needed to keep them

Lifted, a beacon to fix their bearings before going on,

Twenty-two silver shimmerings swimming the dark

Like fish flashing and feeding in a pool at dusk, or

The way poplars turn the underside of their leaves

Toward the approaching storm.

                                                          And now the circle

Wobbles and widens until one by one in a row they

Set out again and here and there houses go dark.

Once I picked up a stream stone and turned it over

And the full moon flared from water-polished mica

And quartz, pinpoints of light and I was holding

A hundred stars in my hand.  I placed the stone

Back in the stream as it was, as I let the geese go

On from here, for someone else to find the light.