The Spy continues our tradition in sharing the best of local poetry as our way to celebrate this holiday season. Once again, we turn to Oxford’s very gifted Sue Ellen Thompson to honor us with her work.
Mid-Winter Migrants
When snow geese rise
en masse from a shallow pond.
When they wheel,
remembering what they left
behind, then wheel
again, a change of mind.
When one black wing-tip
clips that of another
and no one complains.
When they extend
their legs in front,
drawing their wings back
as if reluctant to land.
When they rise
again just moments later—
whether it’s because
a car door slams
or in primordial alarm—
you can be certain
that they have no
choice and that they won’t
return to this same pond
in this same company,
with this much hope.
Sue Ellen Thompson is the first “featured writer” in the Delmarva Review. Among her published works, a fifth book of poems, THEY, was published in 2014. She has been an instructor at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, since 2007, and has previously taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, the University of Delaware, and Central Connecticut State University. She received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.
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