Sarah Mills | poetry | Moving On

    
   
Moving On


At the park, two Canada Geese are pecking the grass,
standing watch over their goslings. They honk at me, so I give

them space. I know space is what we need but I can’t seem
to escape your magnetic pull, the way the sun washes us clean

with its drunken light. Here you are inside another poem,
floating in the lake on a giant flamingo, holding a salt-rimmed

blueberry margarita. You toss me one of those tin can phones
and ask me to get in the water, but I can’t traverse the distance,

what feels like 3,000 miles of migration between us. Once,
I would have wanted to call you every night just to listen

to your warm breath throbbing against the aluminum. Let’s be
the only players in that game of telephone where we whisper

messages to see what’s left at the end. By the time
your voice coasts into my ear, goodbye will be the only word

that makes sense, its echo clanging inside the hollow tin.
I’ll tell you about the geese, how they fly in a V to save energy,

using earth’s magnetic field and coastlines to get back home.
How they know when it’s time to move on.