First Geese

Today a rose-colored blush floated in the west under the pale blue, cloudless morning sky as I started along the north track. Out in the center, to the west side of the green swale gathered a flock of Canadian geese, about 20 of them, the first of the season.

I had heard them before I saw them. If you live in West Texas you learn to identify the calls, like the squeak of a gate hinge in the sky. From near and far you can hear their honking, random and raucous, something they can never get as organized as their flying. Sounds never in synch. This morning, on the way to the park along the north sidewalk of the street, I heard, through the trees to the southeast, the calls, close and loud and so unmistakable that I could turn in the direction and wait. Then they burst over the dark leaves of the trees, right over head, then turning west. I turned with them happily and watched them reorganize their V, disturbed by the turn, and make for the park.

I got there after they did and saw them again as I strode the north leg of the track, losely gathered, pecking, indistinct against the grass. They must have seen the open park and took it as a breather, not a real stop. Maybe some bugs; no water.

I didn't see them very well, tending to watch the track come at me. Focused. I hit a stride today. Legs, arms, breathing, head all working together at a constant, sustainable rate. The feeling of riding my body rather than being inside pushing it. I relaxed, and let it carry me.

The geese must hit a stride too, wings, neck, breathing, feet dragging in the wind. Eyes front, the wind hissing rythmically along the ears. And for the geese, the locking of stride to stride, a little off the wing of the one in front, catching puffs of air and pushing them along to the next in the V, or in the case of the last, letting the last of the used clump of air expand and equalize and drift off, no longer goose compressed.

I feel this stride, a little of it, this morning, quiet puffs of gravel and dust sounding from my shoes. Leader and last in my V. The geese didn't look winded: a sign, I think of a real stride, that it's almost stopping or resting. It allows a stop and an effortless restart.

And so they left the green for some dark wet water they imagined just ahead. Honking, wings digging in, they lifted off as I turned away from the track this morning. The air had lightened and the western rose drained into the higher sky blue, darkening it as the sun touched my shoulders.