Poetry
Do I Practise Life?
Do I practise life?
Do I train for the trials yet to come
Like
the
Canada
geese
do?
Or do I just wing it?
Is it just a rolling reaction to whatever comes my way?
I walk into the autumn dawn
Cardboard-enclosed caffeine in hand
And the geese are already high
A hundred or more
And I think they’re off
To the land of their name
As
one
wide,
sharp-pointed
formation
flaps
in
time
overhead
with a
smaller
looser
detachment
beside
Which way is Canada from here?
I wouldn’t know; is that even where they go?
But then they swing across a paddock
and
the
swinging
keeps
on
going
as
they
circle
I see it’s just a drill
Still early autumn so they’re
Practising migration with the youngsters
So they’ll know
Just what they’re in for when they go
Do I practise life, like them?
Am I ready for the next big step?
Or am I pondering poems when I should be preparing
For reality? Is it easier when instinct
Sucks choice from the equation?
Or is that just an excuse not to look at the horizon?
Grant Shimmin
Grant Shimmin is a New Zealand writer and poet who grew up in South Africa and prizes humanity and the natural world as subjects. He is an editor for the US-based literary journal Does it Have Pockets? He is a new phase poet with work in a range of journals worldwide including Roi Faineant Press, The Hooghly Review, Bull, Blue Bottle Journal, underscore_magazine, Stone Poetry Quarterly and Cool Beans Lit.