POETRY: JENNIFER WENN

AVIAN ODES—CANADA GOOSE
 
The chill, glassy mist just then
Dissolving into hints of sultriness
Echoed with jubilant honks,
Avian position-signalling on high,
Pulling my gaze up to your magnificent
Flying V’s northward bound
Flinging joyful vernal greetings.
 
Come the ordained crisp autumn day
The calls echoed again off frosted fields
As your arrow formations streamed south,
Bidding farewell until spring warmth
Once more crept in.
 
Winter past was deep, consistent;
Now it staggers all around,
Reeling under humanity’s blows,
Glistening white morphs
To sulky brown mud,
Defiantly open water
Supplants sparkling ice.
Eminently flexible,
A few goose homebodies
Spawned many more of you that
Seize what’s on offer, spurn the effort
And trade glorious flight for ungainly
Waddling about and strolls through traffic,
Expropriating luscious, manicured turf,
Cheerfully crapping all over your squattage;
Soaring nobility mutated to a
Grey-brown-black wingéd pest
Herded off the cathedral greensward
By a bellowing leaf blower;
Target practice for a skulking
Archer in a London park;
Clubbing victim of a sportsman
Whose putt was ruined by an
Inopportune anserine klaxon.
 
Undaunted, you multiply and toddle on,
Once a belovéd seasonal herald,
Now flocks of Cassandras trumpeting
Warnings, flaunting consequences,
Announcing a battle joined.

Jennifer Wenn is a trans-identified writer and speaker from London, Ontario.   Her first poetry chapbook, A Song of Milestones, has been published by Harmonia Press (an imprint of Beliveau Books).  She has also written From Adversity to Accomplishment, a family and social history; and published poetry in Beliveau Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Open Minds Quarterly, Tuck Magazine, Synaeresis, Big Pond Rumours, the League of Canadian Poets Fresh Voices, Wordsfestzine, and the anthology Things That Matter.  She is also the proud parent of two adult children with a day job as a systems analyst. Jennifer Wenn's website.