partnerships | drycrikjournal

The talons of a Golden Eagle
squeeze a squirrel beneath
the blades of pasture green

not far from the screen door
I close quietly behind me. A second
lands beside the first to begin

the meal. Several shades of bronze
shimmer in mid-day flight
as the first leaves the second

to eat alone—long flap of wings,
sure and purposeful. Sweet partnerships
grow wild, yet sometimes seem more

civilized than what we see among men.
Perhaps the Bird and Animal people
placed devotion, the selfless heart

into the tribe they created—or perhaps
we learned what we now claim
exceptional from birds and animals.

                                    And note this, dear dead doctor:
                                    When we sleep, our legs twitch,
                                    And not from the hunt
                                    But from trying to run away.
                                                   – Gary Soto (“Dr. Freud, Please”)

A Red Tail pair in Blue Oak tops, buff breasts bared
glow at first light, watch over their dark shoulders
as I feed hay, speak to horses, winter mornings

to wonder about the everyday routines that tie us
to animals, to a place and time by the sun. The deer
would lay down where the barn stands now

over a shrinking stack of bales, a short walk
to metal mangers as I look back through the eyes
of the house to see you moving to the woodstove,

curls of Manzanita smoke disappear into the gray.
We have camped in the trail between canyons of wild
pad and hoof, claimed the space they walk around

and would take back should we be gone for long
without our habits holding what we’ve done together,
together—for this moment we hold our ground.