This poem is very loosely inspired by Migratory birds by Desanka Maksimovic. (sorry, can’t get the accent). For the dverse prompt.
Geese fly south when the cold bites
and makes them cry for fledglings
lost to fox and hawk,
to the death of hunger-weakness or guns.
Geese fly, and their cry echoes in the winter sky,
the cry of ice-bound reaches that I will never see.
The geese fly south to winter warmth because they must,
and the hunger-weak fall behind.
Although I am not a goose,
and my winter place is my summer place,
and my chicks never died of fox or hunger-weakness,
still their cries tear a reply from my heart
for all that is left behind
and all that will never return.