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.