Geese on the wing.

     Wednesdays I finish my volunteering at school at noon.  So, today, done at school I headed west to The Little House. It's a four hour drive so I arrived in daylight and before going to The House, Trygve and I drove to the cemetery to visit Joanne's grave. Lake Sinai is about a mile north of the cemetery and as I passed I notice a huge flock of  geese on the water. As I stood by Joanne's grave an endless flock from the lake passed overhead flying south and too high to be looking for a place to feed. Are they migrating before the inclement weather predicted for tomorrow?
    The geese flying over reminded me of my mother and I'll explain that soon. But first I want to follow up with another thought about 'ambiguous loss' which I wrote about yesterday. There seems something wired in us as humans that wants to rank things, maybe everything. This is certainly true of me. While it seems silly and is likely unhelpful I've found myself wondering "what's the worst loss?'  Are ambiguous losses the worst?  A switch that I could flip to stop such odious comparison would be welcome. Feel what one feels and live into it and stop evaluating...

   My mother was born January 7, 1900, it was always easy to track her age! She grew up in a time when students memorized and I suspect memorizing came easy for her, but it is not my gift. One of the poems I remember her reciting is the  To A Waterfowl, and that is why the geese overhead reminded me of her.

To a Waterfowl

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

"Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye

Might mark thy distant flight, to do thee wrong,

As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek’st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chaféd ocean side?

There is a Power, whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—

The desert and illimitable air

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,

Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form, yet, on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must trace alone,

Will lead my steps aright."

Takk for Alt,

Al