Restless land, unsettled sky

Featherhawking

Once again, I am no different than you.
We make time to walk the after rain,
look where the looking takes us. Down
the stealthy draw among the empty patches
between rising dandelion and where rocks
snailed off to since the last storm gave us
what was not its to keep. Small stories
chalked in owl scat, coyote tracks, the
living parameters that mark fluid lines
between restless land and unsettled sky.

Careful then not to mar the mud traverse
of quail, the light verse of their transitory
scripture leading into yet another density
to remain as indecipherable as sacred thicket.
We know these stories, by heart almost,
as if we were born to read them. The names
never change, merely the readers. We almost
miss them: two twists of fine underdown
strewn and stiffening in the striped wind.
And there beyond those, two grand airships.



So we collect them, gather them into our
keeping for the swift stay they surrender
to be ours. We will, in equal time, give
them all back. Mockingbirds round and
rouse our brief connoiter, wring water from
their brooking song, call out to anything
that might listen. Like you, I turn alone
for the house with these tokens in my hand,
cross spring grass as buckskins snap the wet
weedtops to stain in lingered storm there.

Joseph Gallo
May 18, 2010