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New Year’s Geese

Mark Pearce

    It was a leisurely New Year’s morning, sipping coffee, reading, watching the sunrise out my sliding glass door. I had no plans for the day; just resting up from the festivities of the previous evening.
    I suddenly saw nine large geese strolling lordly down the sidewalk like nine men of Boston, heads snootily high, chests puffed out, a comfortable, unhurried strut.
    Intrigued, I walked out onto my deck. Thirty-three geese had gathered on the gentle slope that led from my apartment to the road. Most were pecking at the grass. Others walked down the sidewalk.
    From time to time as many as twelve of them wandered out into the street, stopping traffic. The cars honked at them. The geese honked back just as angrily and didn’t budge an inch. They didn’t fly, and they didn’t hurry in their steps. The cars would wait for an opening, then edge their way through gaps in the slowly strolling mob.
    The geese were like a street gang. Confident in their numbers, they owned this piece of turf.
    I watched entranced. Suddenly, at some silent call, the geese all stopped in place and stretched their necks to their full length. They turned their heads to face the same direction. Like everything else they had done, the movement was slow and deliberate, filled with a quiet dignity.
    It was uncanny. Thirty-three unmoving sentries, stone still, facing some unseen point. Because I turned my head the same way and saw nothing that could have attracted their attention. No movement, nothing that could have emitted a sound beyond my range of hearing.
    All at once, the geese spread their wings to full length and began to flap. It was the sound of a score of circus tents flapping in a hurricane. The geese rose. The noise was intoxicating, overpowering. I didn’t know the mere sound of wings against the wind could be so loud. It touched something primal in me and felt alien. A force entirely beyond my will or control. The geese began to honk, but not in unison. A cacophony of shouted orders, arguments, conversations.
    They were still fighting for position in their formation as they disappeared over the buildings across the way.
    My mind followed them in their flight for a while, then returned to my solid, land bound existence, unable to join them on their journey.

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