MIGRATING BIRDS
The trouble with geese, wild stars of the Arctic sky
saw the geese today, after six long months without them. Or rather I heard them first, through the twisted pines of Holkham Dunes, their voices bringing thrilling tales of Iceland’s summer: of sweet crowberries in upland tundra; of artful Arctic foxes stealing their eggs and downy chicks; of spilled grain in barley stubbles, fattening them before their great flight south; and of the terrible, blade-winged gyrfalcon which haunts the mountaintops.