"The Distinction of Dusk"
By Matt Smythe
As the sky fades I light my pipe
and settle into the belly of the canoe.
Geese are arriving. One pair at a time,
sometimes two. Their song in flight echoes
as they pass on the far side of the island nearby.
It is different than the song that signals their circling.
Different still than their song when they finally descend.
Into the water they careen feet-first.
Wings wide as Spring.
Breasting water and pollen film.
A cacophony of clucks and growls and sharp honks,
haggling with geese that have already settled on the water.
To float close enough is to hear their pinion feathers
rattle like playing cards in bicycle spokes,
and with ample light, see muscles working
at their shoulders and breast.
To see the outstretched tongue
of the loud lead bird as he wails.
To see each white belly feather as they are by.
To see water splatter ahead of their webbed feet
across the still surface.
After a time they float, still and silent as decoys,
as the few remaining pairs arrive. Some land directly on the island.
Others sing and circle and sing and splash down.
8:45 and like clockwork they have all made their way
to nests in the shadow that is the island.
One last blaze of voices and, assured that all are accounted for,
they go silent or murmur beneath my hearing.
Matt Smythe from the Finger Lakes region of western New York. An Army veteran and lifelong outdoorsman, Matt suffers from an inability to sit still. If he’s not in the woods, or on the water, he’s scheming ways to get there. His work has appeared in Free Range American, Gray’s Sporting Journal, the Fly Fish Journal, The Drake, Southern Culture on the Fly, Revive, Midcurrent, TROUT Magazine, and a handful of other non-outdoors-related magazines and literary journals. He recently published a book of poetry with Dead Reckoning Collective titled Revision of a Man.
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