Not-so-Wild Geese by Jinny Batterson (with profuse apologies to Mary Oliver)
(This parody of one of Mary Oliver’s best-loved poems was inspired partly by the chance to view a wedge of still-migratory wild geese flying south just before sunset while we visited with friends in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. Mostly, though, it was inspired by increasing flocks of their now-more-sedentary cousins, who’ve settled in all along the U.S. eastern flyway, waddling and flying around man-made lakes and golf courses and suburban lawns, spreading tons of feathers and feces along with their still-haunting cries.)
You do not have to buy the latest gadget,
You do not have to drive your outsized SUV
Across expanses of previously untrammeled ground.
You only have to let the hard automaton of your body
relax again into love.
Remind me, again, of your earliest dreams, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world spins on.
Meanwhile the sun is often occluded, the rain acid and dirty
as it scours a landscape denuded of trees,
silts in the rivers and makes dead zones in seas.
Meanwhile the not-so-wild geese, hissing and pooping
on suburban lawns, stake their claims to home.
Whoever you are, no matter how insulated,
The geese honk their way into your imagination,
Calling to you like demented cell phones, shrill and disturbing–
over and over reminding you that you are not the only
species in the world’s family.
Jinny's Occasional Poems 