The Migration of Winter Angels

The call of a whooper swan 

is a horn cry 

across their path of migration,

to hound pondweed

by a Spring of larch roses.

These wintered angels arrive 

as brides of snow and ice,

to the song of siskins, and

as a mist they whisper 

upon a lake, the new moons

of their wings raised

against dark waters.

We all regard this movement 

with such awe - so long as

it is only a forest's constellations,

the wind-bound larch seed,

or a swan, so long as

it is not a passage of people. 

As if the swan possesses 

a particular magic,

where we, so often fixed to a place,

feel this chemistry of an exodus. 

When the Dog Star rises, 

an ambered larch will be cut

in the lunar quiet,

we will lose our needles;

we will become more human, just as

a swan will only sing as it dies. 

Whooping swans are sometimes called angels of winter in Japan, they leave in Spring to return to their particular breeding sites in Siberia. 

Image are from here: 

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Иван_И._Шишкин_-_Мачта_сосновый_лес_в_Вятской_губернии.jpg

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ornithologia_neerlandica_(PLAAT_38)_(7087042397).jpg

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

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Palmer_-_A_Shepherd_and_his_Flock_under_the_Moon_and_Stars_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg