Long Term Mates Migrate Great Distances

Along Nantucket Sound at Dennisport
where Swan River runs out
into the salty sea, I watch a flock of scaups
and one lone bufflehead, so pretty with his white kipot
on the back of his head. He’s far out
from shore and doesn’t know it’s cold
 

today, the depth of winter, wind chill factor
too low to watch for long. (I too like to tour
with different language speakers, unknown others.)
Sunshine is brightest in the afternoon
when I step across ice on sand, that still moves
under my feet, that can’t harden like sod.
 

We’ve migrated here to where it’s just cold,
get away from sub-zero Dakota.
I too like this season, the somewhat moist
wind that forces me to breathe shallower
and adjust binoculars with hands ungloved
quicker than I thought I could.
 

Rhododendron leaves have curled but remain
green as the ivy along my porch. Cedars and pines
are as faithful to life as my mate who came here, unwilling,
who never left the farm in winter before this retiring;
guilty in his recliner reading modern strategies for bridge,
he sips a third cup of coffee and occasionally fidgets.
 

I float along cape roads looking for birds, never very far from him.
I might stop for coffee and a sweet chocolate treat for him,
my farmer
without a field to check, or animals to feed. New to this
migration, but willing to try to survive
without the prairie hard ships.

Rosemary Dunn Moeller has had poetry published in Memory Echo Words, the Alembic, Broadkill Review, the Aurorean, Vermont Literary Review, Rockhurst Review, Thunder Storm and others.

She lives on Cape Cod for the waves, shores and birds.

Rosemary farms with her husband and together they follow migrating birds when seasons permit.