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Ancient Instincts

 
The passing ages raise mountain ranges  
To lofty heights beyond memory,  
   
Making greater the distance between  
River and lake and honored pastures.  
   
And every year the geese fly across the  
Deep blue morning of a dying autumn.  
   
Hunters in the bulrushes blinded by  
The airless sun hearing them pass overhead  
   
Where the seasons await the spirit flute  
Of their calling, that knife a brilliant sky,  
   
Following the ghosted pull of fate  
Approaching cliffs split fine as hair    
   
Of the agile mountain goats who leap    
The narrowing gap that grinds closer,  
   
Siphoning winds of the ancient instincts  
With their irrepressible forces,  
   
Or so the abandoned totems    
Of talking trees have always shown.  
   
As tribal shaman teach that it is the    
Noble way of their kind; a thousand-mile trip  
   
In an unrelenting, unchanging migration,  
Where only the bravest will find their way  
   
Through the eye of that mist-filled needle,  
To arrive safely home on the other side.  
   
   
   
Copyright©️2018 Jade Pandora. All Rights Reserved.  
NaPo/GloPoWriMo 2018
Written by Jade-Pandora (jade tiger)
Published | Edited 8th Apr 2018
Author's Note
Day 6
When I was small, I heard an ancient North American tribal story about migrating geese who, over thousands of generations, never varied the path they flew no matter how the land changed, increasing the danger of the journey. Then later as an adult I watched a TV documentary about the migratory habits and patterns of various creatures such as sea turtles whose length of migration over possible millions of years had grown from mere hundreds of miles to thousands due to continental shifts and the broadening of the ocean. It was what I learned about this particular species of sea turtle (which, I think, live somewhere off the coast of western Africa), coupled with the old legend about geese, that has coalesced into this poem.
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