David Lee chose to read a poem by Leslie Norris, the celebrated Welsh poet who settled in our valley in 1983. What began as a six-month visit to BYU became a permanent position and honored title of poet-in-residence. I attended a few of his readings: Norris' Ark a collection of poems for children originally read for BBC-TV programing for children.
But what I remember most about Leslie Norris was seeing him, sometimes with his wife, always with his dogs, out on his walks. His path ran the opposite direction, so he became as familiar to me as each bend in the road. It never occurred to me at the time that he was probably creating poetry. It was the wooded, shaded pathway in the river bottoms--a place that became a kind of refuge for me, for a poet.
I was unaware of this poem about his wife until David Lee read it. It tells of love without mentioning love. I only have to think of the poem for my throat to lump. Geese mate for life and often this is life changing information for hunters. When they realize they are killing a goose's lifetime companion, they often stop hunting geese.
“… I have, from time to time,
related some incident of my boyhood,
and these are contained in various
chapters in The Naturalist in La
Plata, Birds and Man, Adventures
among Birds ….”
—W.H. Hudson, in Far Away And Long Ago
Hudson tells us of them,
the two migrating geese,
she hurt in the wing
indomitably walking
the length of a continent,
and he wheeling above
calling his distress.
They could not have lived.
Already I see her wing
scraped past the bone
as she drags it through rubble.
A fox, maybe, took her
in his snap jaws. And what
would he do, the point
of his circling gone?
The wilderness of his cry
falling through an air
turned instantly to winter
would warn the guns of him.
If a fowler dropped him,
let it have been quick,
pellets hitting brain
and heart so his weight
came down senseless,
and nothing but his body
to enter the dog's mouth. — Leslie Norris
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