I’m most alive those time-stretched mornings
where mayflies drop in death and the dried
swarm smells of wharf-wood, where clouds are
hand-raked and copper hedgerows mirror
the limpness of Mojave sand, a small brown owl
crawls back in the cool burrow, full stomached,
from its beak a two-note coo gusts through
yucca spine, juniper bark, longhorn beetles eat
elderberry leaves in the valley. I miss that valley
heat, the scent of manure and semi-truck diesel,
of chlorine and my mother’s pool-wet cheek.
my neighbor with a shovel scrapes a possum off
the road, iron skips across asphalt, black eyes
like stigmatas, gray-brown fur left in the street,
a ratking of fingers reach out its stomach and like
this underbelly of young death, we long for
our mothers to breathe again, strong as bird lime.