The eagle and the goose
A frighten’d cry echoed across the moor;
It took me from my task (just manual)
And snapped me from a mood (just casual)
But it was there, just there, outside my door.
Hardly expecting to see much at all,
Though here last year through a long hot summer,
Now bringing no joy as once they did before,
Our golden birds have been elsewhere this fall.
They’d drifted off, beyond my consciousness;
Till now. But an eagle chasing a goose!
And though t’was feather-close the goose got loose!
Ah, the blue-blooded Aquila chrysaetos!
The goose and its mate swung off down the glen.
The great eagle followed half-heartedly
- (for surely t’was beneath his dignity) -
The geese cacklin’ away like two old hens.
With a new king atop his sailing throne1.
He tipped a wing and went off to the west.
But what a fine meal that goose would have blessed,
And no glance back, for the king was his own.
© RM Meyer
Braeintra, October 2022
1 Written when King Charles III succeeded to the throne
