Walk

I was walking with the Teenager and then I sent him on home
and I took a detour
by of all things the lagoon system
because it's surrounded by lots of grass
and the Kalamink woods
and because the maintenance guy who always waves to me
from his mower, on my walks,
cuts a clean path through the brush,
right up to the creek.

It's a circular path, and nobody walks on it,
so sometimes I imagine he made it for me
and hopes I will walk there,
and see some beauty that is otherwise hidden by the scrub.

So I climbed a tree by the creek and put my head back
against the big limb that angled up behind me,
and I watched the geese fly south.

They formed an imperfect V,
and there were stragglers
and loud ones and quiet ones
and they kept coming
group after group.

And once I saw a lone geese calling
frantically, headed north,
and I thought,
he is late,
maybe he got preoccupied by some beauty
and now has to catch up.

I think that
the wrong direction
right then, for him,
was the right direction.

It made me feel good.
And then I went back home.

*