A flock of starry egrets, v-ing themselves across the pink sky.
It was evening in Florida. The heat, orange as egg yolk.
I could not see
their heads, the black assurance of their eyes
looking straight into the coming night.

The world was still hiding from me.
Around me cicadas crooned
their invisible green songs,
in the manicured lawns.

All those lakes, black as the barn
closet where mom used to hide
our Christmas presents.  Life taking
shape in the bodies of breeding cows and their deep red secrets.

I still don’t know what this body is for.
The architecture of my desires.

Not part of a flock anymore, but alone
in my own bird heart. I have always been
a dark mountain, afraid of lonely children,
and their volcanic truths.

Time shifting us like tectonic plates,
too big to contemplate.
Soon it will change again.
I will leap over one more language

travel down one more street
corner in a part of the country
my mother never saw, and nobody gave me
permission to crave.