American Life in Poetry: ‘With Spring in Our Flesh,’ Don Welch

Early each spring, Nebraska hosts, along a section of the Platte River, several hundred thousand sandhill cranes. It’s something I wish everyone could see. Don Welch, one of the state’s finest poets, lives under the flyway, and here’s his take on the migration. His most recent book is “Gnomes” (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2013).

With Spring in Our Flesh

With spring in our flesh

the cranes come back,

funneling into a north

cold and black.

And we go out to them,

go out into the town,

welcoming them with shouts,

asking them down.

The winter flies away

when the cranes cross.

It falls into the north,

homeward and lost.

Let no one call it back

when the cranes fly,

silver birds, red-capped,

down the long sky.

Poem copyright 2015 by Don Welch, and reprinted by persmission of the author. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.