In Training for After Middle Age

The geese in the Hudson Bay move
the same as the geese at home.

 The discarded white cups floating beside them
manufacture the same silences.

 Lapping water, clanging flagpole, the insistence
of train after train. In a city like this one,

 I can be invisible, mute. Slack. Mis-matched.
Oily braid splintering down my neck.

 It’s just practice, mind you. Like bees
and fallen trees, I am here

 and not here even when
no one takes note.

Michelle Hendrixson-Miller received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, where she served as poetry editor of Qu Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared in Thrush, One, Josephine Quarterly, Poems and Plays, The Moth, Adirondack Review, Still, The Fourth River, Harbor Review, Mudfish, The Museum of Americana, 2River View, One Art (January, 2023), and others. https://mraehendrixsonmill.wixsite.com/mhmpoems