Even the trudge through mud
sucking at our soles,
single file
in the predawn
downpour,
makes me happy.
At a stop in the line
in this perfect darkness
we bump into each other,
then grope our way
into the bird blind.
We’ve been told
to stay silent, but when black fades
to charcoal, Christine whispers that
the smudge on the ice is the cranes.
We’ve heard them all
along, of course, waking up,
their croaking a raucous purring.
The sky brightens to silver
and I can see a red crown
on the slender head
of each bustled gray body.
I wish they would dance,
but they are crowded
on this melting patch of ice,
there is less ice this year
than last, which was less
than the year before.
They are hungry
to fly to the stubble
in the cornfields,
I can hear it in their voices.
Kathleen Williamson won the runner-up prize in the SLAB Elizabeth R. Curry Poetry Contest and was a winner in the Poetry in the Pavement project in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Her work has been or is soon to be published in Inkwell Journal, Ponder Review, Newtown Literary, The Healing Muse, Boston Literary Magazine, Plum Tree Tavern and The Westchester Review. She attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and takes classes at Poetry Barn, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Hudson Valley Writers' Center. She is on the board of Saw Mill River Audubon.