Estuary
How it must have been for them, when wind came
to strike cottonwoods they called home down
—silver bridges across a gun-smoke creek-bed, joining
yellow meadow to meadow...how it must have been
like the beginning of time, when the first one beat
great wings (though so silent a field mouse
would never even hear before talons sinking in...) and
rose over the Blues to find this valley with others
following. And their human eyes, forward-gazing
in their round faces, they turned toward sound
to catch it in feather discs, their hearing tuned beyond
human imagining...and then they were gone, like
mist dissipating in the lowlands, and an eye trained
toward their going might, squinting, distinguish
signs of intention written by pinions, stroking damp
air in their westward rowing. And we told ourselves
all water eventually finds the sea—our coming, their
going—so synchronous; this was simply something
we wanted, more than knowing, wholly to believe.
Copyright Credit: Katrina Roberts, "Estuary" from The Quick. Copyright © 2005 by University of Washington Press. Reprinted by permission of University of Washington Press.
Source: The Quick (University of Washington Press, 2005)