6 days to christmas – geese a-laying

Written by: Tan Shi Ying Marissa (23-O1) 

Designed by: Ng Le Kang (23-I2)

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

 - Mary Oliver

It had already been ten years since he had visited the country house. Luke found himself on the familiar gravel path that led to the weathered front porch of the house. The once vibrant paint on the porch railing had faded, and the scent of cedar and pine lingered in the cool air. 

He sat down on the creaky porch steps, feeling the rough texture of the wood beneath his fingers. The house stood, surrounded by the same tall pines and scent of wildflowers that had coloured his youth. The occasional rustle of the last falling leaves of the year brought him back to his childhood. It was a sign that winter had arrived.

‘Everything’s still the same.’ He chuckled to himself, entertaining the thought for a brief moment before entering the house.

‘Luke! It's been too long,’ she said.

She smiled warmly, and for a moment, Luke saw glimpses of the woman who had nurtured him through seasons of laughter and discovery.

Luke took a seat, and his grandmother settled into a worn armchair.

‘We’re finally selling it, aren’t we?’

‘If we do it now, we could still fetch a good price on the market. Besides, I’m too old to take care of it on my own anymore.’

‘Ok, I’ll look into it.’ Luke answered.

It had been too long since he had last been here. With job hunting, settling down in his new apartment upstate, and the ever-growing demands at work, it had been difficult to come down for visits. Thanksgivings or Christmases were the only opportunities for the family to make a trip to the country house where his grandmother lived, but for the past few years, his grandmother had been the one to come to the city to visit and celebrate the holidays there with the rest of the family. As the years passed by, slowly, the familiar sight of trees and lakes had flitted away into the distant memories of his past.

Luke took a moment to take in the house. This was where he had spent most of his childhood. He remembered which of the stolid floorboards would creak when stepped on, the windowsill where his grandmother and him would sit by as she read him stories and poetry, and the teapot where she made him a cup of peppermint tea after his outings in the woods.

Perhaps I’ll go for a walk outside one more time, he thought. And so, after having a brief chat with his grandmother on the details of the sale, he had stepped out to catch some fresh air.

Amidst the silent activity of winter, Luke stepped through the thick snow, leaving delicate imprints of feet on the canvas of white. The cold air brushed past his cheeks like a friendly greeting to a long-lost friend. Each breath made visible with a faint wisp, joined the falling snowflakes to reveal the dance of winter. Occasional flurries cascaded gently down from the hoarfrost branches, adorned with a veil of snow and icicles, burying the momentary glimpses of earth beneath every step.

Luke walked towards the lakes, where frozen water ran deep. 

That’s when he heard some rustling in the bushes.

A short distance from the path, he saw an injured goose struggling with a wing caught in a tangle of bare branches. Luke approached with caution, his figure casting a shadow on the ground with the midday sun. The goose, with its feathers matted, and eyes reflecting a mixture of fear and helplessness, turned momentarily fierce and fluttered its wings as if trying to scare away the unwanted visitor.

Luke, unsure of how to help, tried to untangle the branches to free the bird. However, its struggles only intensified, and its squawks echoed through the silent landscape of winter. With its wings flapping violently, Luke tried to reassure it.

‘I’m just trying to help. I’m not here to hurt you.’

And as if the goose understood what he had said, it settled.

….

What if years before, when his grandmother had brought him to the lake north of his family’s country home, he had planted the seed in summer as his grandmother had tasked him to? 

He was barely nine years old then. He recalled walking over to the edge of the river, where he had dug up a small patch of soil, and felt the moisture of the ground. He stared at the small ditch, and proceeded to cover the soil over it, with nothing buried beneath. 

WINTER

He trudged through the ankle deep snow and tried to find the spot where he was to plant the seed two seasons before. The seed was still in his little leather bag that he had slung over his left shoulder during his summer outings, and he had continued to carry it around with him as the leaves turned amber, and amber turned to crystal. 

The ground was frozen and there was no way for the boy to break through the soil to bury the seed properly. So, he simply cleared a small spot of snow and placed the seed down on the surface of the soil. Looking back, Luke wasn’t even sure he had found the same spot. After all, many places within the woods looked the same, and despite having spent many hours in the summer running through the woods and inspecting the leaves and sticks on the ground, he struggled to identify the familiar locations from his mind with which the snow veiled over.

Afterwards, he had followed his father out to the woods to find a Christmas tree that they would cut down and bring back to the house. It was a tradition that he had seen done many times before but that day had been his first time helping out with it rather than waiting back at the house for his father to return with the tree.

Luke trailed behind his father, much like the goslings that waddled behind their parents in the summer. He had helped carry the netting — he was too small to push the wagon that carried the axe forward to their destination.

The job was simple. He only had to set up the netting on the ground in the direction the tree would fall. His father had positioned the axe cleanly at the base of the tree, and with every swing, brought the tree closer to the ground. When the job was done, Luke tied the knots to secure the tree for safe transportation. 

That night, in the comforts of his blanket, he watched the snow fall heavy, coating the trees from his bedroom window. He was awake until morning.

Seasons passed, and Luke continued his life in the city. 

….

As Luke worked through the frozen branches, he had come to realise that a branch had impaled the wing. Was it during the struggle? He cleared a few more branches before realising that the blood had already frozen; It was clear that it had happened before he had arrived. 

Should I pull it out? As he inspected it, he’d noticed that the wing was already frozen to the branch and pulling it out would only hurt the creature more. He knew he had to go back to the house to find some tools to cut the branch off instead. 

As Luke stood up, the goose faintly resisted as if to protest its one hope of survival leaving.

‘I’ll be back.’ He told the bird, and ran off to the house.

Looking through the toolshed for pliers, he thought back to the moments in his childhood where he had first been told to bury a seed in summer. 

What would have been of that seed if he had decided to plant it then? Would it have been one of the many trees lining the riverbank, providing shelter and sustenance for the animals and plants in the area? Or perhaps, it would never have sprouted, and eventually it would have rotted and returned back to the soil as nutrients.

He thought back to the goose and its struggle to survive. He had always admired the way nature worked; That new life would be born over and over again; That it had so relentlessly fought to live and be a part of this world.

Luke found the toolbox in the shed, grabbed it, and ran back out. He trudged through the snow and like that winter’s day in the woods when he was nine, the snow was deep and he had to wrestle through the path one weighing step at a time. The sky gradually darkened and when he had arrived at the riverbank again, he found the goose — motionless.

On the day he had followed his father out to cut down a tree for the first time, why had he pointlessly tried to bury the seed in the lifeless midst of winter? No life would have come of it on the surface of frozen soil — but he had wanted to hope. Somehow, it would survive. Somehow, it would sprout into a magnificent Tree.

In truth, it had been a burial. The time for birth had passed and winter was no place for new life to come into the world. Was it strange to mourn for the death of a tree? He felt faintly hollow then, as he thought of how new life was never born, and how old life had left as well.

The fate of this goose here too was rather cruel. While all the other geese would fly away for the winter to faraway lands, it was stuck here, done in by a mere bush.

As he watched the carcass lie there peacefully in the winter snow, he had heard the honking of entering geese into the area. They laid down beside the dead geese for a moment of quiet, and left shortly after they seemed to confirm its death.

‘When a goose gets sick or injured in the wild, two other geese stay with it to lend help and protection. They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly, or until it dies.’ He recalled his grandmother sharing this fact with him as they watched the geese fly out into the distant skies.

Luke walked towards the bush and pulled the bird’s wing out from the branch it was lodged in. He gently placed it on the ground and searched through the toolbox for a small shovel. It was clear the items in the toolbox had not been touched for years, and rust had long coated the surfaces of most of the items inside it.

He pulled out the aged shovel and began slowly chipping away at a spot on the ground by the river. The ground was hard and it was difficult to break through, but he continued to cut through the frozen soil, determined to make a ditch in the ground. 

When he had dug deep enough to reach soft earth, he picked up the lifeless bird, placed it gently into the hole in the ground, and covered the soil over the hole again. When he was done, the sky had already darkened and he returned back to the house to freshen up and rest.

That night, in the bedroom he had used as a child at his grandmother’s country house, he had not slept; But when day came, on the first glimpse of light, he saw geese, flying, far into the distant clouds of the snowy winter sky.