Flyway

There is no light that holds the dead

in beauty like the light before nightfall,

that evening abundance of grace

luring the wild geese to stop on their way

to Mexico, bringing all that is gone

into a moment of homecoming.

I had walked through it once.

It was December, the cold was beginning,

and here in Ames, Africans at the crossroad

of life, refugees and migrants, were getting

ready to meet at a makeshift bar assembled

in a basement and named after a famous donkey

in Khartoum, so they said, where the rhumba

would wild out of speakers and we would seek

what those at crossroads seek: touch and joy,

sight and the safety of bodies. I had taken

my time before getting on the bus heading

to the bar. Walking down Coconino,

the dogs were out, blades of grass faded,

man-made lakes were filled with geese like airports

on water. Even in the midst of so much beauty

there is no place that will save us. Our destination

is between suffering and joy, everything else is a road

filled with unending patience. And even I, a nomad,

who has witnessed so much of the world,

will be forgotten before I reach the veranda

of my homeland, and yet as I watched the last light

of evening, waiting for the bus, I saw them, the dead,

descending on wings, joining the birds to play

in water like little children, laughing into joy,

and then they were gone. All that was left

was the only freedom we could speak without shame,

the weather, winter, the harmony of all things.