Wind dashed from my palm a flock

of mica— scone-crumbly,

water-colored glass.

My handful of angles flashed up

like a foam of sandpipers

off the ocean’s tongue.
If I could believe like a child

or crone, I would have known

the bone broke my way,

the rabbit’s foot clutched,
my sun-rinsed palm

odds on clean futures

wave upon wave, as sandpipers

whirl, reel, and resettle in surf.
I saw the fawn with her mother

at dusk again last night, staring up

from the irrigation ditch.

Spotted, still, she crow-hops,

teasing the leggy grass,

the big-eyed cars who roar

like mating frogs,
then she freezes, one brown branch

of her mother. We stare-down

until mother and child bend

their necks and rip the grass

as if the world meant

to be this way. Every night,

the nighthawk sings the same

mocking rasps from his beak,

prophet’s death song

when he tucks his wings and falls

and rises, and falls.
Guzzling sandpipers dot-to-dot

the productive edge, just where

the footing incessantly pulls out

from under their toes,

broken cookies of coral grinding

finer. A head-scarfed housewife

fills her grocery cart, talons

pierce a fox kit’s neck,

a cleaning woman unlocks

the door to her workday. Andrea,

her fourteen-year-old daughter,

is at summer camp too,

like the other girls.
At Camp Static Cling,

Andrea and her mother start

with the partner dance, stripping beds.

When the vacuum shouts

at the TV, Andrea shucks

pillowcases. Her friends, upstate,

by the lake, slap mosquitoes—

OMG, they text, thyr trrble—

and raise their hands for

computer animation

and archery.
Andrea lifts a can labeled

air-freshener. If Outward Bound

left Andrea in this hotel laundry

all alone, three whole days

with just three matches, I know

she would wedge both doors open,

let the wind wrinkle through, and fold

into flight.