Monday, January 12, 2009

Full moon nights in Dry Creek are not quiet.
The indigo sky, seeming like a sea beneath a powerful
lighthouse, is traversed by the music of a roaming ark
of animals, who call to each other in the encrypted codes
of--as far as we can tell--whistle, bark, & wail.
The main melody seems to be held by a young sisterhood
of sleepless coyotes, who prowl the creekbeds & hedgerows,
ululating wildly while leaving the hairy signatures of
their scat on the pathways and property lines:
county assessors rewriting the agreements.

But night is also home to the animals who live within
the lacey suggestion of fences, like the soft & single goat
Calliope, who throws her front legs up into the olive
trees, rising to embrace them before ripping off their
tenderest growths. I've heard her address the moon
in a plaintive staccato, and her scat are compact
and raven-colored, strewn like dark, tiny olives in
the grass. Across the creek, in the plains where Semillon
& Viogner grapes once grew, the baseline is provided
by a pair of snoring piglets, dirt and shit sloughing
magically from their bristles and returning to the cold
ground, which waits for water and daylight to will it
back into mud. This is the January song.

1 comment:

  1. well, calliope has had her moment

    and now you have written her an ode.

    the lacey suggestion of fences
    i love that

    will walk by and remember YnsSA

    ReplyDelete