Migration

The long slow song
calls me, calls me
Its echo ripples to the shore
Southward they are going, going
And my heart is torn in two.
Southward they are flying, flying
Dancing through the waves
I must be flying with them
Singing with the sea
Yet I’d leave behind me
precious new and strange
dear sweet family.
 
All my life of drifting, drifting
Day from day from day
Rhythms of the seasons turning
All I ever knew.
Yet they pulled me in their ambit
like a drawing tide
their world of time and metal wonders
faster rhythms, fleeting ways,
hurts and love, side-by-sideness,
face to face with otherness,
all from one dear act of rescue
brought me to this happiness.
 
But I must go, I must, I must
Charley calls me, time is sped
Yet time will pass, the season’s turning
Come the spring, I’m Northward led
Come the spring, I’m homeward led.
 
– Kathryn Andersen