Somewhere Geese Are Flying: New and Selected Stories — Gary Gildner

In "Somewhere Geese Are Flying," A son (in the often anthologized "Sleepy Time Gal") competes with his parents to tell "a simple story" about a poor boy/rich girl romance that "happened many years ago in the woods by a lake in Northern Michigan ... and the song he wrote her that became famous.
A champion pole-vaulter jumps out of an airplane in France on D-Day, wearing a parachute that fails to open; he survives but, as his son says, "Imagine a man falling from the stars. It s a long way down."
Thrasher, in Paris, hears geese honking in the sky and Barbara all the way from Iowa saying, "Hold still... I m going to kiss you now.'
Stories in "Somewhere Geese Are Flying" were written in many places Michigan, Paris, Iowa, Slovakia, Oregon, Greece, Idaho, and on the Isle of Skye. Gildner says, "For a time, I thought to call the book Foreign Stories, but the title I use carries a sound I favor, a music both close and far away, something like stories trying to connect in what seem the only ways available to us: love and loss and that inseparable hold.""