~~~
All summer the water flowed free through the reeds of the marsh, springing up life together with the silt it carried under the sun. The marsh is still there now touched by late autumn light. Among the dry, dormant stalks, now largely bereft of birds, one walks hearing a different, lonelier music as a chill breeze shifts those same reeds. Out among the aimless clicks of willow twigs a coyote stands with ears stiff and eyes locked before casually loping away. A Black Phoebe still sallies from fence posts and half submerged stumps for dwindling insects. Mallards winnow murky, dark water and sand through their bills, barely looking up from their feeding. An avocet, alone and stark white, lets its long, thin legs lead it gently through water shivering in isolated pools, now and again lowering its scything bill into the mud. And it is there one feels inside oneself a lovely, little heart which understands and needs no answer from the world. Though maybe as the mudflats turn to granite sand and the light begins to slant, lonely and golden, it may find its reply in the recede and return at the vast lake's edge. There one crouches over claws and other blue bits of crayfish, looks at dark leaves and green gathered muck. All around one sees in long shadows the tracks of small birds, the white shells split open on wet sand, and all the feathers let fall, careless, to the wind. And there is faith you may follow, at some time behind, with the wandering pipers and constant, cool pulse of the waves. And you may see all that I saw and there too see the trace of my steps where one wishes they had more gently lain.
~~~
