The Return Flight

Evening spreads fingers of shadow
down empty corn rows as I stand
and scan the sky, five wild geese
plow the air in furrows of light.
I stare and drift slowly backwards 
from their moving sky, they have not changed
these trumpeters whose spring salute
aroused us from sleep though now
the blood excuses what the mind recalls.
Toward the arrow’s notch they burn
in autumn’s fire, the steady beat
of wings stirs me to wonder what dark desire
once turned me from my anchored roofs.