Call of Wild Geese

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These are the mornings of mist that ring with the call of geese. What is it about catching sight of the flight of geese and hearing their wind-borne calls that evokes such feelings restless longing and yearning within us? And yearning for what? We listen to the words of Wendell Berry, BB, David Whyte and Mary Oliver to find ways to capture those powerful emotions.

Journal entry:

“24th September, Friday

A tangle of Victorian girders
Russet brown; a lacy filigree
of metal, rivets, and musty glass.

Anti-pigeon spikes
Repel the reality in which we live.
Willowherb smoke, rusty sidings,
Bramble fountains – barbed and irrepressible.

The sharp-edged wings of a gull,
Outstretched, cruciform, alive.
And my spirit rises with it,
Soaring into the sunlight above the grime-streaked glass.”

Episode Information

In this episode I discuss some of the ‘Little Grey Men’ books of the author BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford). They are:

BB (1942) Little Grey Men reissued (2012) by Oxford University Press.

BB (1948) Down the Bright Stream (later published as The Little Grey Men go Down the Bright Stream) also reissued (2001) by Oxford University Press.

Wendell Berry’s poem ‘Listen!’ can be found in his (2018) volume, The Peace of Wild Things published by Penguin Books.

David Whyte’s poem ‘The Journey’ has a number of publications but can be read in his (2018) David Whyte: Essentials published by Many Rivers Press. You can watch him talk about it and recite it here: The Journey.

The two poems by Mary Oliver ‘Snow Geese’ and ‘

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