Twilight. A crisp Monday. Blue herons
wade through the mudflats, knee reeds and snags
into the sigh, pin the shallow waters
into place. Here, a moon will rise and
spill light. No one will note or embrace
the advance of night, or needled stars,
glad within their bones. No sound lifts.
Eagles bulk in hard scythes above the The Great Salt Lake,
carve the dark measure of hours, mark the passage
of godwit and grebe. A tundra Swan
drifts through the flat-shine, loons and plovers stir
in the moon-painted lap, the air fills
with invisible wings.
In a place like this
a woman approaching the taste of forty
could pad out in her skin, her limbs
all angle and flow; one throb
cupped in the palm of heat, her pulse threaded through
like the ache of spring, and no one would notice.
She could stroke in and out of the water
all night gulping life; pausing only to wonder
at 300 eagles in the cottonwoods girdling Antelope Island,
the gibbous moon behind them
decanting bright ribboned waves
of salt, memories of a sea before it sank, before
it seeped into the earth, until only this kettle of blue was left.
She could dip below the silky wrinkle, mouth
the brine and pause, rolling the bitter cold
between tongue and cheek,
sift it between her teeth, down the length of her throat
then rise to gasp the thinner stuff of air
and release the moan, neither sob nor shout.
She could rise from this slick
and slurried bed, bring her hands up
like a skiff of damselflies, shake the wet from her hair.
She could scoop the water to her lips
and suck the years flavored rich with green,
and rot and marsh, the same years
that swell in ranks behind her, flatten
now into ripples: or she could turn
and strike out, the deep waters
stinging against her breast, brine shrimp
phosphorescing softly beneath her, out past the herons,
and eagles, the island with its slumped, disinterested face,
toward the egress beyond, the slow migration home.