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Hundred Wild Geese
Carol Ann
Davis
Ma Fen, early twelfth century
Each curved neck
tells me to learn more about geometry,
telemetry, reeds.
On this scroll, pill bodies suspend
in the snowy sky, Ma Fen’s monochrome.
It’s before the new style
to compose “everything in one corner,”
so the field is busy
with all manner of movement;
some fish the white lake—
the line of its surface a glance at order—
others land
or practice landing as if haunted by the
freak storm
that led them there.
Above them,
near-suicides arrow earthward,
their black wings solid as metal,
sculpted in midair to fix ruin,
a flood, the death of a son.
Not a hundred, but a suggestion of infinity,
the long flight ended among ghosts. And
lyric, the land
too white to find,
these little geese given the shape
of what is holy, what flown.
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