“Tule Elk Preserve in March”

Here it is midmorning and the valley is singing to itself.

Listen to the bees

thrumming to the trees in bloom like a hum in the chest

for comfort. The hawk unfolds from the cottonwood

a mosaic of pottery shards and the ravens

croak like stones dropped in water, down the back

of the throat. Feel the earth pulling you close.

It is not nostalgia, to cling to the marshy ghosts

of a parched lake, the water snakes who swarmed

through the rattling reeds.

The breeze picks up and the hawk returns.

The heat rises and the plains begin to wave.

One shell-white egret sits in the shush

of leaves still translating wind into sound.

Someday all this will have silted away, the halo of song

arcing above this small pond, the calf chasing the birds.

The birds translucent below the sun.

Once this was underwater

And is

And will be again.*

* From Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa