National Poetry Month

After the Changeling Incantation by John Philip Johnson

To become a goose 

had seemed important, earlier,

when he made the change. 

A gray goose for some reason, fat, 

with the ability to lift above

the archers' arrows,

fly past the leafless autumn trees, 

and cross the bowl of the mountain valley, 

beyond those far peaks. 

There was a mission—

to get something,

or to return with someone— 

some reason to be a goose

other than just gooseness, 

other than filling your wings with sky—

Hands drop the wand; 

feathers cannot pick it up.

We forget when we change

we become something else. 

Things mean differently.

He circled the great alpine woods, 

forgetting. There, below, 

knotted in the trees,

were the plottings of men, 

creatures like little gods, 

with their endless violence upon things.

They make such noise. They wail and bleed.

It is no place for a goose.

It is no place for one who can find

north and south within his body

and know which one to choose.