I find myself again
performing the ritual of changes
at the clotting edge of sunset,
where shadows slip silent through reeds
and brackish waters, thick with primordial mist.

The sky blazes indigo,
fades to ochre,
to umber—
and then to that dreamless, colorless hue
nightfall stretches across the horizon,
serene as a young god in asana.

A delta of sandhill cranes rises overhead,
their bugling, sharp, piercing the rugged dusk—
autumnal, deep,
woven from ten thousand shades of mauve, gunmetal, plum.

One older bird lingers behind the flock,
his scarlet brow an open wound
glimmering against the vermilion cut of sky.
He glides, unhurried, in perfect silence.

Listening to their ragged calls,
I feel my body dissolve into the trembling stillness,
brilliant, vast,
time herself, exhales.