Dan Guenther: Two Poems

Humpbacks Heading Seaward into Deeper Water

A squall drives in over Botany Bay,

and a pod of whales heads seaward

while you watch from the window

overlooking your balcony,

still dwelling upon a season of choices

where things seldom went as planned.

What’s missing on this chilly day

is a trip to the pub

to ease the monotony,

that need to come together

with others of your kind to end the entropy

and warm the cold ennui:

A pair of flashy lorikeets intrude upon the quiet,

arriving for their daily handout

in the demanding way that they do,

while off Kurnell the white-caps turn into swells,

and dark shapes of humpbacks

break the surface.

Dan Guenther

Snow geese passing through the High Plains

A flight of migrating snow geese
calls down
through the April twilight.

You are following them northward along Route 85
toward that place where the big flocks rendezvous,
where every fall your grandfather
carried his reticence to a community coop
with buckets of apples.

During the day he snoozed in his orchards
between milking Holsteins,
and spent evenings home schooling seven kids.

He could dowse for water with an L-shaped rod,
and once spoke with an Archangel
while goose hunting near the Wyoming border:

Remember overhearing
that jealous uncle ridicule your grandmother
who believed in reincarnation,
and how she wept,
running off for a week to wander the backcountry?

Like the waterfowl in transit overhead
your grandparents lived in tune with a wilder spirit,
and were never quite one with the rest of us.

When asked by your children and grandchildren
best recall them both not for their shortcomings,
but for their example of hard work and independence,
and for the brutal beauty of things that they loved
about the high plains, including each other.

Dan Guenther