Poetry

Dust Land

The gravel in my neck

keeps me straightforward

Eyes on the road ahead,

but I’m going nowhere

Here, in Dust Land,

dry isn’t just a season,

It’s a way of life,

& like all good survivors

we adapt Blood

turns to sand,

Eyes film over

to protect themselves

from seeing too much

too closely – if you hush

you can hear the

desert’s secrets

on cue – at dusk

a soft rustling, flutters

of distant laughter,

moth wings flap,

swooping bats, & a

low roaring wind

Mountain scented

hot air, thick & stifling

The cotton in my throat

keeps me silent, mind

on the pathway forward,

but still, getting nowhere

Birding On Boardman-Ottaway

I find an abundance of seagulls to be sacred

A rare teal plover spotted on the sandbar

is dependent on migratory luck

People come to this lake

for shallow clarity

I am here for the lens lucidity

of a red-winged blackbird

I’m learning the different duck species

My guidebook flaps in the spring wind,

swaying the waves like silk

I strain to hear grackles battling

nearby commuters for a chance to be heard

Paintbrushed clouds dangle overhead, mirrored

on the surface as I seek wingspan silhouettes

I spy a man photographing these feathered ones

We share the same admiring gaze

toward hawks dancing above pines in the distance

Swooning over swan nests and praying

for a glimpse of our ornithology lifer lists

Somehow able to still find community

within the ordinary robins and sparrows

We see here every exceptional day