These Geese, Again
by Jeff Dutko

These geese, again these birds and bugs

Their flight, our envy

Our envy the ballast of our flightlessness

Grounded in that uncertainty

the germ of unimagined belief

is planted and grows

As the cotton that covers our souls

While we mock at what we cannot

simply comprehend and enjoy

 

No, it’s not the geese

Their flapping and triangulation

all overstated motion and mouthing

that construct the tenets

of what we shall listen to

What it is, I only know

that I do not know this language

that speaks belief and cannot be sure

of any invention in linguistics

which clarifies the concepts

 

Upon its creation, however

I will not need an interpreter

to understand the volumes

that form in silent tailwinds of birds

Which at all angles postulates

a different translation in transcendence

Even as I watch from this grass

now nearer spring

 

 

Certain Demographics

So many sacrilegious gestures to avoid here

as you slowly rush through the late doors of respectable hours:

Roman Catholicism, New England, early Sunday morning.

You cannot let movement betray piousness

it’s left to the eyes to scan and create the language

that will reconfigure the steady habits of congregation.

Yet, you have a place, surely you do

but how to swim through this holy sea

to cause no commotion, avoid all scornful glances?

The backs of so many balding, middle-aged and Caucasian heads

yearning for redemption and cover

confusing the issue of finding your husband.

All these stern and polished heads

resembling a monotony of rear view mirrors

into which the sanctimony of the already seated can stare.

All except for your groggy husband.

His allegiance to the altar so unmitigated

that you must rely on the charity of the brethren to do your bidding.

A last chance disguised point and nudge as the opening hymn

fades into the Rites of Introductory. 

 

It is an entirely different experience for the African-American woman

who came in the same swing of the door.

She takes one look and locates her spouse

as easily as finding misplaced obsidian atop an outstretched bed sheet.

She moves swiftly, purposefully, disregarding any delicateness

and approaches the back aisle. 

Her effort and force so natural as to be unnoticed

as if the magnetic pull of order has guided her

to the only other person whose Sunday best

is accessorized with the skin of dark jewels.

She crosses herself and sits next to her husband

where a seat is always left open.

 

JEFF DUTKO lives in Farmington, CT, with his wife, two children and crazy dog. Much of his work is dedicated to giving voice to the special population he teaches. Some of his most recent work has been published in Right Hand Pointing, Rattlesnake Review, Slow Trains, Haggard and Halloo, Miller’s Pond, The Furnance Review, and The Writer’s Block, which is not the Writers’ Bloc you’re thinking of, although he has been published here before, too.

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