North Star

Who knows what a capricious sea

hides within its subliminal currents,

beneath each turbulent skein

who pierce the air with babel: 

the heavens are more reliable.

Pink footed geese are a clan

in flight from glacial roosts,

their young hatched from the ice

of an egg nested upon the courage

of a cliff face. They have learnt

to be observant when dogs are mute,

when a sparrowhawk is just as watchful. 
 

The North Star has anchored midnight,

a bright nail, shifted by glittered gods,

it draws a nation of ashen wings

to join its path. These geese,

a sun's descendants, are intermediaries

between sky and water, mantled 

in feathered shrouds of the otherworldly.

We are all lured by a lodestar - 

the safety of constancy, we pray

to stay the hand of an ill-fate,

we follow a deathless eye, fixed

amongst a cyclone of stars. 
 

Image is from wikimedia commons of a pink footed goose who have arrived here for the winter. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pink_footed_goose.jpg

Also on Twitter: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:North_Star_-_invitation_background.png

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Newburgh,_Return_of_the_wild_geese_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1046952.jpg

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anser_brachyrhynchus_Alpheraky.jpg