Immigrants and Natives

Once scarce, they are adapting.
Canada geese homesteading
from Arctic tundra to Florida Keys.
There are inconveniences:
they eat grass to the quick,
feces litter walkways.
Uniformed, traveling in groups,
flying a formation powerful enough
to beg envy from the military,
they call radar through foggy snow of February
and in spring the goslings
walk out of scrub, across city space,
to ponds where flotillas glide.

Living on the edge
of reforested parks and refuges,
finely tuned to weather patterns,
deer stand like ghosts whittled
from a thin branch.
They browse the low limbs, leaves, grasses,
disappear when no ones watching.

Out early
its walkers bring the news.
A long term city dweller
might mistake one for wolf or feral dog.
Signs go up on mailbox stands, newsletters:
"Keep the cat inside, don't tether your dog."
Coyotes, with their quick, small secrets,
determined, maligned.

And the black bears are losing
their habitat. Lumbering through
suburbs, they forage garbage,
sleep in backyard hammocks,
successfully make the evening news
to create their personal statement
about our invasions.