Canada Geese
Everybody’s guilty. Don’t you know that?
—David Harsent, Poetry Foundation Interview, 2012
Addle the eggs. Shake ‘em. Keep shaking
till they’re dead—but set the eggs back
in their nest. Mother goose won’t lay
more. (These geese like to stay put.
Unlike our senate gulls or other
ageing snowbirds, they don’t head
seasonally south to toastier ponds—
but hang around town, dropping
their dregs everywhere. Goose turds
big as milk cows curdle on the beach,
the public square; kiddy-parks; infest
the precise civic greenery. Now: inject
needles into their eggs. Get ‘em gone.)
Thin ice shudders at the edge
of the innocent lake. The geese pause,
necks slowly stretching, muddy eyes
fixed on our shins; then carefully step
from self-righteous eugenics
into the frigid deeps.
