Claude Wilksinson

Winter Field White with Snow Geese

I’d thought to entice my students
with Baudelaire’s indulgences in absinthe

and his mulatto mistress, though none of them
ever give a sonnet about anything

at 8:00 a.m. in a cold, fluorescent room.
What an anachronism I must seem

drifting back by rote, still loving
the lives of those from centuries ago, only I

waltzing among dusty museums
of synesthesia and empire as if

through a tableau vivant
before their drowsing eyes.

But nearing yesterday’s bland fields,
there’s suddenly now such a blizzard

of honking and descending splendor
that I recall a story about sacred geese

kept in the Temple of Juno, how
their startled racket supposedly alerted

sleeping Rome before Gauls invaded,
thus saving the day as it were—

and for me, my own segue
out of the world’s apathy

as these many thousand white blessings
offer their random seconds of beauty.

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Claude Wilkinson is a critic, essayist, painter, and poet. His poetry collections include Reading the Earth, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and Joy in the Morning, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is Marvelous Light (Stephen F. Austin State UP).