The Cedarville Review 2020

POETRY | 21 PATTERNS KATIE MILLIGAN “... neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation…” As I walk down the alley on my way back to my apartment, a V-formation of geese passes over my head in fluid shape, pitch against the murky sky, wings moving so slowly that I wonder how they stay airborne. The flurried, uneven chorus of squawks, layered and uncoordinated, unsettles me. The way the wobbly arms of the V aren’t straight, the way two or three geese straggle disproportionately behind the others, the way the wings don’t move in-sync: it all makes me shove my fists into my pockets and draw my coat closer around myself, which furthers the chaos by adding the clanging of my keys against my leg. Just when I think the awful squawking is fading, the noise crescendos and I crane my neck to spot two more V-formations, just as imperfect as the first. I’ve been cynical lately; maybe that’s why these geese disturb me, make the silence around me feel like it’s pressing and contracting and oozing into my ears, shattered only by the screeches. I wonder why nature gets to have set cycles, a repetitive rhythm to its flow, an