I want the geese to stand beside me,
softly speaking, stroking my hair.
One might lay his blazoned head
on my lap. I'd pet the wild thing
and he would let me, the others
cooing ungoosably in their joy.
We of kindly natures would stay
there, the water bounding in
the narrowest of wavelets, every
small stone seeming smooth, and all
the world – the dirt I sit in, the dust
insinuating itself into the leather laces
of my shoes, would be preening, graceful
and open: the many males, the females
in their pale brown abstraction, the goslings
swimming simply on their own.
At the Pond
At the Pond
By Barbara Helfgott Hyett
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Spring 2003)
Biography
Barbara Helfgott Hyett, a poet, professor, and public lecturer, has published five collections of poetry: In Evidence: Poems of the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps (1986), based on interviews with U.S. GI's, was selected Booklist's Editor's Choice. Her second collection, Natural Law (1989) includes poems about the history of Atlantic City, and was the first in the Salt River poetry series. The Double Reckoning of Christopher Columbus: 3 August-12 October 1492: Poems (1992), an epic poem about the 1492 voyage of the Columbian expedition. The Tracks We Leave: Poems on Endangered Wildlife of North America (1996) and Rift (2008) were widely reviewed.