Coupling

Sorry this is a day late (and here I am a dollar short--sorry, couldn't resist), but my sister came to visit this weekend. So, I'm a little preoccupied.

Coupling II

My breakfast is gone when
I notice honking at my patio door.
The geese that live in the complex
have made their daily migration to my abode.
They too seem to be paired,
their white-ringed necks creating hearts in mid-air,
a Hallmark greeting card just outside my door.
Geese mate for life.
Even if separated during annual migrations
they wait--sometimes years--for their partner
to return to the nest.
If one in a pair dies,
the other continues to live--
but not thrive--
for he (or she) does not re-mate.
Flocks have no singles’ groups
whereby unattached geese can find a new beau,
no ladies' night at the local pond.

Watching my flock hunt and peck
through the sparse brown grass under the elm,
I wonder...
Do some geese never find a mate?
Do some just join the thronging vee
hoping this year they'll find that lover
who makes their lives complete,
the one who gets them as none
other in the migratory pattern have?
Are there geese who watch as others find their mate
and yearly hatch their broods of goslings?
What does this single goose think
as her dark head turns grey?
Does she fear dying without notice--
alone, unmourned, easily forgotten?
Does she spend her nights yearning
the warmth of a body curled next to her
in the cold and forbidding darkness?
Does she watch each year pass
and realize the fading hope of meeting "the one"?

Holding my cup of Earl Grey between my hands,
my heart aches for that one soul
slightly apart from the rest,
hunkered, separate, not feeding.
Her bowed head swivels to observe the others.
She, unpaired, is spectator to their lives,
barely an actor within her own.