How usage changes usage: with so many people
in the cities, and so few geese, nobody is
silly as a goose anymore, and the word anserine
looks like something the w has been left out of:
so unexpected; in fact, silly as a goose: makes
me think of some English hamlet, houses clustered
at a bend in the road where a bridge crosses
a stream: a gaggle swishing leisurely off
hissing and shrieking in mock protest at the boy
driving the weed pickers to the fields:
animals were television then, so much time to
learn the ways of geese and time to dream
a gooseless world in no need of tending: and
think of the dark lively trees the brookbanks had
spared and the shattering among waterstones where
the brookfall fell: now, it’s video and digital
and Internet and VCR, usage doing away with
geese, specially ganders, high-billed meanies.
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