Geese, Peace, and the Farmstead: Rachel Peden’s Winter Meditation

Under the big Swamp Maple in the east lot,
the gray geese and the white Pilgrim ganders gather silently.

During winter nights, they sleep in the open face tool shed, and often in the night, they think of new expressions of scorn and at once utter them.
(“We are the watchdogs, we geese. We saved Rome.”)

That peaceful morning they walked on the clinging, moist snow and were still.

They looked thoughtful as if contemplating the sense of peace that provided the whole farmscape.

I realized to my astonishment that if total peace ever actually befell the whole world all at one time,
it would be the most spectacular sight mankind has ever seen.  

Nobody would be able to believe it,  or, perhaps,  even to survive it.