AM writing this at 2:30 A.m. on a late
October night. A few moments ago I heard a sound that set my
feet on the floor before my mind had fully emerged from the
dim halls of sleep. Wild geese honking! I must go call my
sister to hear too. The sky is really clear, but there is a
low, foggy ceiling. The rhythm of the alternate sounds
overhead was like the plashing of canoeists on a smooth gray
sea. But how swiftly they passed, and silence muffled the
sky!
Yet the sounds keep ringing in my mind's
ear till I cannot sleep. Is it just that the sound heard on
this inland Tennessee air reminds me vividly of my childhood
on the shore of Lake Michigan, where autumn flyways, day and
night, were filled with the mutual guide-cries of the
migrating flocks? The answering thrill to the geese's cries
may be nostalgic when I feel it now, so far removed in time
and space. But I felt the same thrill then. No matter how
often we heard the flying V's coming, someone shouted,
"Geese coming over!" and we ran to watch. They might be
sloping down to the lake, black against the reflected pink
of sunset, or rising southward against the golden morning
sky, or passing overhead without stopping in the blue
noonday; but always the sound of geese brought us to some
advantageous viewpoint.
The greatest thrill of all came to me one
fall night when I had stepped out into a warm, moist
evening, with a low, foggy overcast, gently diffused with
the brilliance of the brightest moonlight of the year—"the
hunter's moon." While I stood in darkness on the ground, the
semi-illumined misty world above me was filled with moving
voices. Some were loud and strident, some gently twittering.
From every point of the northern sky the voices swiftly
approached and flowed over me into the southern distance.
Frightened, I cried for the family, who all came out to
listen. It seemed as though all the little birds in Canada
and northern United States were using that warm, bright
night to put as many miles as possible between themselves
and pursuing winter. And they all were fluting as they
flew—families reassuring one another, tribes keeping trace
of tribes. Wondering, awestruck, I asked mother many
questions about those voices.
I do not recall her answers; I only know
that when later I read Bryant's "To a Waterfowl," I already
knew what it meant—mother had told me.
The human heart was never meant to be
alone. Its final rest is only in God, and whoever seeks it
in other human sources will sooner or later plummet downward
to eternal darkness. But keeping ourselves to that unseen
goal of the celestial flyways, we still need the
companionship of others passing the same way. Whenever since
that distant autumn night I have found myself alone in the
dark, frightened and bewildered, I have known that above the
overcast, moonlight was shining, and when I spoke my
Father's name, my brothers and sisters drew near in
fellowship.
Why do geese go honking down the dim
night sky?
Why not pass a-silent? Why that broken
cry?
Ah, they need the aid of knowing others
near.
List each one inquiring, "Brother, are
you here?"
I am wending homeward through
impenetrable night,
Moving, angel-guided, toward a far and
unseen light.
I too need the aid of knowing others
near.
List my heart inquiring, "Brother, are
you here?"
