flock of
ordinary birds,
we’re walking
along the dry river,
and you say—the birds
don’t think of themselves
as ordinary,
in fact,
they probably call themselves
“the birds,”
and we laugh, tinkling about
how people
tend to call themselves
“the people”
as if there were no others,
and you continue—
the birds have
a creation story.
did they come from far away? I ask.
no, you say, from here.
red bulrushes, jagged mountains,
low clouds punctuating
turquoise sky
and heaps of bright green
mistletoe
torn from its
commensal home
by the wind.
it’s Christmas day
we’re two old Jews
out walking
by the Rio
no longer Grande
but a huge dry bed.
I pick up a piece
of mistletoe
and hold it
over our heads
and kiss you
on your soft lips
while the birds
write solstice
across the pale sun.
Miriam Sagan is the author of 30 published books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon). which just won the 2016 Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. She founded and headed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement this year. Her blog Miriam’s Well (http://miriamswell.wordpress.com) has a thousand daily readers. She has been a writer in residence in two national parks, at Yaddo, MacDowell, Colorado Art Ranch, Andrew’s Experimental Forest, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Iceland’s Gullkistan Residency for creative people, and another dozen or so remote and unique places. Her awards include the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and A Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa.
