1.

The newly widowed gander 
muses: “She was perfect.”
“She was not!” his sister hisses
as her mate nods, satisfied.
“What do they know,” 
thinks the bird,
and honks with grief.

Geese, the silly geese,
geese of Monogamy.

“She was perfect,”
moans the old man,
years of squabbles,
refusals, and terrible
boiled dinners
forgotten in favor
of a wholly
tender marriage.

“She was not!” we’re 
thinking. What 
do we know? He shambles
to the barn and sees
the gander’s sister
preen her husband’s breast.
The single gander watches,
sorrow massing in his underwing.

He, who won’t go humping again.

2.

She sulked and worked
at being a wife. He sculpted 
in the barn. Mornings,
a bantam hen laid 
an egg beside his chair.
He studied charts
and modeled animals
on ghostly metal armatures.

He ranted over the success
of others—his doctor brother,
rival sculptors.
She shrank, and sulked,
turned away, turned again,
and sulked.

Sulking fed the tumors
in her bladder. She lay ill
and told him something
she had always wanted:
a donkey. So he made one
and hurried to the foundry
to bring the present home
before she slipped away.

Afterward, he set it
on the mantel.
Its gentle patina
surpassed the sheen
of all the proud, bronze horses—
those he never spoke to.
“She was perfect,”
he told the donkey,

his fellow orphan.