We watched white flecks, birds far up against the ridge. Bright against blue-green, a trick of evening. Walked to see them, earthbound, slow, DV creaky, and me ready to spring forward, these legs strong, but it’s arms we need, wings. How we’ll fly, long necks extending, then folding, so few wing beats, thermals holding us up. Great egrets making a way north. We say, They’re going to a new country. Seven birds in cottonwood tops above Cutoff Slough, nesting for the first time so far north. Twisting toward each other as they fall.
Ruby Hansen Murray is a poet and writer living in the lower Columbia River estuary. Her work is forthcoming or appears in Cascadia: A Field Guide (Tupelo Press), River Mouth Review, About Place, Under the Sun, the Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, and Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry. A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program, she’s a citizen of the Osage Nation with West Indian roots. See www.rubyhansenmurray.com.
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