The following poem (revised slightly since) originally appeared in the The Squaw Valley Review in 2009. The Squaw Valley Review is an annual anthology of poems originally composed during workshops held every summer in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in Squaw Valley, California. Workshop leaders for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers during my residency were Lucille Clifton, Robert Hass, Sharon Olds, C.D. Wright, and Dean Young.

Lesser Gods

We see geese in the air. We posit takeoff,
posit landing. We see geese on the ground, in grass.
We posit a second home in water.
We would have missed the geese in the air if
not for the shadows of flying geese.
The geese we saw in grass
were wary of a dog off its leash. A bark alerted us.
We saw sentry geese eyeing the dog.
We posited nesting.
We discussed. We posited
the self as feather. We continue to posit the we
for whom the spokesperson
is me. We

speak of life as a long, long climb. Doesn’t
really matter that there isn’t a we here
aside from right here
where I say it. Doesn’t matter that
me, I’ve been bleeding to death
for years, leaving myself on chairs
and dollar bills,
on shoestrings, in palms.
We posit getting there. We posit
a there that is nothing
like here. We

breathe heavy after an uphill stretch, hands on hips,
hands clasped and cupping the head. We posit
shadows of angels. Posit
that they’re identical to the shadows of geese. We
whisper and we don’t know why, as if we
ourselves are afraid to be ourselves,
are in fact no selves at all, are
just-opened sacks of wind
echoing and swirling through the mountains
and valleys
of each other’s ears.