ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS
Sequence: 3
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