Duck, Duck, Goose

A little bit lighter, a little bit warmer.

This morning was a somewhat typical start. It seems like when I am in my house it sounds/looks like it is raining quite hard, but when I begin riding it is either not raining at all OR it is raining so lightly the wind dries my jacket before the rain can wet it. This morning was that kind of morning. By the time I got to my school, I was not in the least bit wet, although it seems like there was rain falling the whole time. That is Eugene for you. We talk about the rain so much and yet when you really live it, there isn't that much to it.

Anyway, on to the theme, Duck-Duck-Goose. There was a huge amount of water running in the Amazon after the real rain we had over the weekend. The result of all the water was an unusual number of ducks on the path. I happen to love how the ducks stand in the bike path in pairs. I am careful to go around the ducks behind them so they can keep waddling along in the direction their head is pointing. It is not uncommon for me to see a pair or two, but this morning I passed 4 pairs of ducks perched out of the rushing creek on the path.

The other part of the theme is goose. In this case it is more accurate to say geese. As I approached my school I noticed an unusual number of geese circling the fields of Churchill High School. It felt like a great indicator of spring arriving, no offense to the groundhog of 6 weeks ago! On the other hand I spent the entire morning reciting lines from Yeats' "The Second Coming" which although talking about a falcon and a falconer reminded me of the geese circling in an ever tightening gyre. It was a beautiful, engaging, creepy, overwhelming experience to see that many geese (over 2oo) flying in a lose formation, but clearly swirling around in the same direction. I will put the poem below so you can have a little Yeats in your life.

The Second Coming--- W.B. Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?