First Crane

The following poem was written by a Door County author and featured in the 2011 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar.

First Crane

The call of spring came to me
like a playing card clothes-pinned
to the spokes of a boy’s bike,
and I scanned Karl Johnson’s field
as I walked Baird along Waters End
until I saw him,
the first Sand Hill Crane of the season.

He stood like an adolescent
not yet accustomed to his height,
a solitary figure on a street corner
expecting the company of friends,
this harbinger of spring, diffident,
awkward, ill at ease, appropriate
for our uncertain season of promise,
often forgotten, misguided, misplaced.

And then he flew,
prehistoric against the sky,
legs dangling,
like Icarus,
close to the sun.