THE LONG STRETCH out of those southern marshes and shores the flight of cranes to our spring-flooded fields it is the same flight for thousands of years but new cranes each year the rivers have wrested new beds out of the old land the same plains take the overflow in this century and the last and the one before houses fields roads were built but the cranes land where they always did they don't know their own history they don't need their own history they have unerring wings
next poem >>