At this time of year we have the enormous pleasure of seeing Barnacle geese flying past our house as they leave their overnight roosts on the merse and fly inland to feed. Later, in the afternoon they return to the salt marsh or merse as it’s more commonly referred to here.
Any time between 7.30 and 8.00am, the first skein will appear, closely followed by the others. Some mornings, the light isn’t good enough to capture a photo worth keeping and as we’ve got storms forecast for the next few days, it might be a while before I stand outside at breakfast time while my porridge goes cold!
I’m accumulating a number of poems about geese, all written over the last six years since we moved into this house ,which is in a prime position at the top of a hill and ‘on the edge’. Here are two of them …
Geese in Winter
sketching the glow of dawn sky
geese scribble their route westward
thousands – skein after skein
head for inland grazing
later – they return
with their wild evensong
before settling on the merse
for another winter’s night
Solway Migrants
Nearly sunset,
January sky soon to be a palette
for shades of evening light.
Suddenly,
skeins of barnacle geese head
back to the feeding grounds.
Solway coast, haven to migrants
from Svalbard, welcomed,
nourished.
Their journey
free from barriers, unimpeded
by politics, prejudice.
Life's a Beach 