January/February 2025

Ready to fly, my heart has been unbuckling
for a long time, waiting. When you finally

arrive, we are given: extra room under the sky,
a thousand days of spring, the ability to read

the wind, what we see tomorrow becoming.
And I know it’s a slippery slope—how things

become other things, digging in our heels
to slow erosion. Our…

If, even now, I am excited about it: every cow & horse,
every canoe on the surface of Pyramid Lake—
If, at two hundred miles out, I take a selfie with the Bravoland cowboy,
record us driving by the Tule Elk Reserve, record
two jet-black crows circling the morning’s blue wrist of light
like a scrunchie, then, I can only imagine …

I remember first hearing rumors
of the atom. We are all made up
of crumbs, Q told me
when we were kids. In those days,
nature’s magic tricks were still
mysteries to us, secrets we sought
to unravel: how astronauts float
in outer space, how leaves turn from green
to gold, how the sea becomes the clouds
and the clouds become the sea.
Q’s mom…