She dreams, on a frosty morning, that she is migrating with the wild geese.
The wake of air that trails from their wings makes tunnels of spinning light
as they stroke into the frozen dawn, their calls echoing against the cold.
Ahead, she sees the bay of a great lake, solid now, a flat steel gray,
and she falls with a flurry of downy white flakes to its ice-heaped edges.
Near the shore, winter reeds pen haiku with invisible ink on fresh snow.
An Irish setter walks past, stopping to read the lines, burying his nose in them.
“Bailey!” a woman calls from a house that sits on a rise above the shore.
“Bailey! Come!” And the dog trots off.
As a pale pink sun pushes above the horizon, its light spiraling in tunnels
through the falling snow, the calls of geese echo from across the bay.
She wakes, and finds a gray feather resting on her pillow, glistening with snow.