Over by the wild fields, crossing wired fences
climbing into view, we saw the sandhill cranes
like airplanes, impossibly winged
they weaved in and out of sight
stalking tall amid the grassy screens
prehistorically made and in the green
of murky shallows to wade
warming in the sun, they come
returning every year
and we can feel the air move
in a giant swoop, a flapping wave
breathing heavy winged
we sighed, at their precarious lift off
the feathery snow of sky
alas, the distant birds 
silver streaking by.

I TOOK away three pictures.
One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan.
One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come.
One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing points, half over the sand, half over the water, a half-love for the sea, a half-love for the land.
  
I took away three thoughts.
One was a thing my people call "love," a shut-in river hunting the sea, breaking white falls between tall clefs of hill country.
One was a thing my people call "silence," the wind running over the butter faced sand-flowers, running over the sea, and never heard of again.
One was a thing my people call "death," neither a whistle in the little sandhills, nor a bird Sanscrit of wing points, yet a coat all the stars and seas have worn, yet a face the beach wears between sunset and dusk.

Like a chorus of angels singing slightly off key
In the chilly morning it builds as the sun rises.
Some mystery passes from one to the next, silent.
Just how, who can say? Their bodies lift in unison.
There is nothing awkward about them.  Poetry!
I was quite unprepared for the glorious spectacle.
Thousands.  Like watching a ballet of slow wing beats.
7000 miles they follow their heritage of millenniums;
And they rest upon the banks of this river.

The cranes walk forward
Into the damp, dry, dead field
Looking for a home.

So you came down to me:
     at my feet, not the wax
     leaves of the wild blueberry but your fiery self, a whole
     pasture of fire
Louise Glück*

There was flutter of worked cotton hem
between fingers. Ring of cicada click in birch tree leaves,
muffled by swish of grass in breeze, matching

the wisp of sandhill crane feather on fern.
Skin sliding over fragrant sweat.
Sweet waterfall of hair in your hands, fluid in the heat.

Echoing flap of fat trout tail bounced inside the valley,
Scales skimming lake water. Our knees shook
above the foot-bridged creek.

Low groans of swaying trees, aching
in their old bones. Guttural tones.
Your palm shivered on my heart in the haunted noise.

Beneath all our sounds, the under-ripe
blueberries thudded to the ground.
Our love pounded best when they were still green.

Some days we'd lay about the milled plank deck
eyes to the sky
shoulders pinned
deliberating
on the hickory trees
and pillow clouds
and heavenly contrails

the warm caress  
of a mid-summer wind
whispering through the hayfields
coondog at our side
sandhill crane still
feet in the shallows
of the Haldimand pond

a soft trickle coming
from the Pickerel stream
creaks from the woodshed whistle
as the Massey Ferguson
putters her way
up the county line

catharsis in place
(in this ethereal space)
just a garden variety day
...with fire ants
and fowler toads
and golden honey bees

The Sandhill Crane glides low,
Reflecting in the rippling mirror,
The tips of its unbroken wings
Caressing the edge of the water.
That’s how I wish my lips
Knew yours.

I wish I could alter the flora,
The gilded meadow,
To spell out your name with
Purple and Mexican Butterfly ****,
Maybe then you’d fly back to me,
And never leave.

Where did you soar off to?
Where did you go?
Possibly to Hoosier Hill,
Or to Hemlock Cliffs,
Where you rightly belong,
Because of your elevated beauty.

How selfish of me.
Who was I to think that
I could steal you away, that I
Could own something so brilliant,
Like trying to take the sun
And getting burned?

I glide low on the water’s edge,
My pain reflects in the ripples.
I wish I could hold you,
The way the tree limbs hold
The Inca dove’s nest.
I wish my heart
Knew yours.

The smell of cows and feed
blow in from the north
the cool winds soothe
after the heat of summer

Days begin to get shorter
animals begin stocking cache's
moving quickly back and forth
searching for quick meals

Changing of birds
White wing and Mourning dove
Ducks and geese of all kinds
migrate through to the south

Sandhill cranes,
honk loudly
announcing their arrival
and with them, the season changes

Summer to Fall
and straight into winter
as the years go by
they do so faster and faster

Waffle-like prints in the sand,
maple syrup sun pours across the land,
sunrise beach bulldozed clean,
sandhill dunes growing green.

Opalescent sheen of mother of pearl,
old oyster shells spin and whirl,
the waves come in with a slap,
seagull wings beat and flap.

Sand dollars here, but no change,
the crab runs sideways it's quite strange,
bottlenose dolphin swims right by,
the sun climbs higher in the sky.

Jelly fish, opaque blue balloon,
sandpipers squeak out a tune,
colored clams exposed with every wave,
they dig in fast like crawling in a grave.

No longer alone as the day begins,
kites now fly in the onshore wind,
parents and children, with frisbees and nets,
picnics to come and skin surfing I'll bet.

Senryu

Bending trees in storm
The resistance of survivors
Another winter gone

Senryu

A sandhill removed
The oak had no protection
Roots in sandy soil

Senryu

Glowing almond tree  
Do not resist the tempest
Unfused let it pass


Senryu
Upset almond tree
Someone called it a bush
****** botanists

again, he hears her first
a bright ripple on the breeze
pulses of lonely trilling

glancing skyward he catches
an hallucinatory glimpse
of her sand-stained wings

as if to avoid his gaze
she glides effortlessly into the
blinding back-light of the sun

she emerges head first
her red eye-mask glowing
in the midday illumination

overhead, she trills again
she circles and watches him
she is as curious as he

Playa lakes and puddles formed,
in the days after the storms.

Frogs eggs laid, tadpoles quickly,
on the edge, the mud is sticky.

Blue Herons stalk the wide shallows
bringing death like from the gallows.

Sandhill Cranes with their red caps,
eat fresh grass shoots with quick beak snaps.

Cottontails and jackrabbits drink,
here comes a skunk with all its stink.

A tractor comes and critters scatter,
how could they not with all that clatter.

Conveniences and machines of man,
make life hard out on the land.

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.