Last night the geese came back,
slanting fast
from the blossom of the rising moon down
to the black pond.  A muskrat
swimming in the twilight saw them and hurried

to the secret lodges to tell everyone
spring had come.

And so it had.
By morning when I went out
the last of the ice had disappeared, blackbirds
sang on the shores.  Every year
the geese, returning,
do this, I don’t
know how.

Two Kinds of Deliverance
from Dream Work
by
Mary Oliver