At sundown I see my neighbor out,

stopping in the woodshed

for an armload to hold me

through this first snowy night

of the darkening year.

Overhead, a racket of shouting:

directions in a primitive language,

no doubt, and we slip out

into the trackless yard

to see the geese flying low,

in a black V against blacker sky.

Easily the last remaining flock

to leave us this December:

mild season over, it is time now

to hurry in, to bundle up,

to hunker down. 

Anne Britting Oleson is a writer and teacher living in the mountains of central Maine. Her fiction, poetry and reviews have been published in literary journals nationwide.  She wishes someday to be the poet laureate of something.