Third Day of Spring

I went out to the desert when the sky drifted east,

soft white cumulus clouds as big as Oregon towns

populated by rain storms, separated by clear blue

wide enough for rivers of sunshine.

I walked across soft volcanic soil damp as springtime.

Last year’s bleached grasses stood pale

while new green grass busied itself with life,

grew upward from the base of every clump.

Tiny dicotyledons of green optimism sprouted in open soil

and green moss, invigorated by spring.

Off to my northwest, on Shoot Butte, a twenty two pistol,

a three fifty seven magnum, and a sixteen gauge shotgun

pop, roar, and hammer insistently against late afternoon.

Thirty thousand feet above me, impatient jet transports

noisily suck oxygen to carbon dioxide every nine minutes

as inadequately civilized humans rush toward oblivion.

I carry this advantage of lengthening age,

I walked the Oregon Desert when days went by without shooting.

Airplanes were rare occurrences, and the sounds of wild animals

were the only sounds I heard above the soft passage of my own feet.

Shooters pack their weapons away in large pickups

and drive down from Shoot Butte toward an evening in town.

A long moment of grace when only wild animals, new green plants,

blue sky, silently traveling white clouds, and I own the Oregon Desert.

Meadow larks sing all around me. Quail call softly from hidden gatherings.

A bluebird flies past and stops to sing. I hear a flicker somewhere far off.

Coyotes yip, yip, yip, and break to springtime song.

A rabbit startles away from me through green growing grasses.

Two ravens circle each other in aerobatic celebration of spring,

high up in the drifting blue and white sky,

and a red-tailed hawk drifts like a small, fast cloud.

Wild animals, springtime plants fill with the enthusiasm of spring

and build a future of summers, autumns, winters, springs.

New images of life fill me and spring of the year.

I fill with the eternal power of life.