Chris Anderson Verse-Virtual 2018 October

October 2018

Author's Note: I don’t remember now what prompted me to write this or what I was thinking, except that this moment happened and I sat down and wrote the poem in more or less one sitting. It’s one of those! (One of those rare ones.) I recently included it in a newsletter I send out in my role as a Catholic Deacon as a kind of response to the terrible scandal erupting in the Church again—not as a defense, not as an attack, not as anything except what it is: a moment, and I think a moment of grace. Of misreading, that becomes a reading.

I Think I Hear the Cry of Geese

I keep thinking I'll get over these feelings,
my anger, my fear.  How sitting around a table
I don’t really love anyone.  But no.

These are the feelings I am called to have,
all of them.  This is what I am being given to feel.

Stepping out on the porch I think I hear
the cry of geese in the morning sky.  But it’s
just my neighbor up the hill, calling in her dogs,
softly, babytalking.  Winter.  Cold and dark.

What I don’t understand at first
is her babbling.  Her quiet voice, like a mother’s.

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