Greetings dVerse Poets and welcome to Open Link Night! I’m Kim of Writing in North Norfolk and I am your host this week.

While most birds in the UK follow migratory patterns, some are resident here and we see them all year round.  I wrote about seagulls and shared some photographs in my OLN prompt back in February.

It’s a treat to greet the regulars in our garden and down by the moorings, for example the robins and finches that play hide and seek in our bay tree (yes, it’s still there!) and, of course, the magpies that hide in the curly willow. I enjoy listening to birdsong and try to identify the various calls.

A sound I find truly evocative is the seasonal one of geese flying overhead – which led me to this poem by Mary Oliver:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

As most of you know, unless you’re a newcomer here, Open Link Night is when you choose any ONE poem of yours to share. There is no prompt and there are no specific instructions to follow. But if you’re lost for a theme, you could write a goose-themed poem!

Enjoy your time here and pay your fellow pub-goers a visit as everyone makes the rounds of reading and sharing.

Here is how you link your poem:

• write a poem on your blog;
• go to Mr Linky below;
• enter a link directly to your one poem and your name;
• remember to click the small checkbox about data protection.

When you click on the Mr Linky button you will find links to other poets; more will join during the next 48 hours. Please read and comment on other poet’s work; we all come here to have our poems read. Also, don’t forget to link back to dVerse from your site/blog, and, if you like, please comment and participate in our discussion below. We are a friendly bunch of poets.