Living on a lake has its privileges. I watch the sun come up across the water each morning and look out dozens of times each day to see what’s going on. I’m never disappointed. My endless fascination with life around the lake will be apparent when you read GOOSE LAKE, my first poetry collection published as an eBook.
The book begins . . .
August 4, 1989
Meeting Our Neighbors
As I stooped in my driveway for the morning paper, a delegation of geese hissing like punctured tires flat-footed it toward me across the grass. This was not a social call. My new house squatting on their land beside their lake was an outrage. Indignant to their pinfeathers the geese closed ranks and delivered their ultimatum in a furious chorus.
Bills hard as chisels,
tails aquiver,
necks recoiling like missile launchers
firing off fierce glares
the posse bristles pigeon-toed
to enforce goose law:
Trespassers
will be hissed
until
they learn their lesson.
Over time we humans near the lake have made peace with the geese which, on a busy day, outnumber us twenty to one. Our key concession is to their occasional messy forays into our yards. These Canadians don’t know about their ancestors, those hardy enforcers of goose law that established goose rights in the neighborhood. It’s always hardest for the pioneers. The lake lacks an official name but I call it Goose Lake. It seems fair.
