Merril D. Smith

Leaves, rain, night,
a bullet-ripped child—

so many things fall,
are falling—

the crows, black-winged tocsins,
sound warnings,

but it’s
the geese I observe—

the parents still guarding
their almost-grown goslings,

the way they listen for the call to fly
then take turns leading.

I watch them soar,
hear the wind-flap of their wings—

I’m not starving, nor beaten,
nor bombed; I’m not a child raped
then cowed into silence. I have not yet
been coerced or suppressed—though it may come—

today, I imagine
flying with the geese

through grey clouds and brilliant blue sky,
swift-shifting in surf-spray
whiffling and sideslipping,
like autumn leaves, twirling
almost upside-down

before landing just right.

Merril D. Smith is a Pushcart-nominated poet who writes from southern New Jersey. Her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press), was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Her new collection, Held Inside the Folds of Time (Jane’s Studio Press), was released in autumn 2025. Find her at Bluesky: @merrildsmith.bsky.social; Instagram: @mdsmithnj; Blog: merrildsmith.org.

This poem appeared in What We Hold On To: Poems of Coping, Connection, and Carrying On — Winter 2026, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.