Killdeer


This once was water, river stones in hard mud,
side channel of the confluence. Some summers
to swim, we had to first wade across fast white
water, shin deep and blistering cold, to reach
the sandy beach at the town swimming hole. 

Now the river runs, yes, still runs, but slim
like the old marathoner who lived on my child-
hood block, who ran and ran, year round
from our town to the sea. Stringy muscles
and an irrepressible urge to move. Run,

even at a lope. Today, the river I see below
our barn is high, though not as high, trees
submerged a few feet from shore, rocks barely visible 
under spume marked like pocks on grey skin.
It’s June. We used to call it Junuary. Burn

wood in the mornings to take off the chill.
Now we cock the light-blocking shades
and open the windows at night. It’s cool, 
but not cold. The mock orange blossoms
blow like snow. Soil under grass is brown, 

no matter how much water we lay down. 
There’s a drought. Still walking in the trees 
where these two liquid bodies meet, the tiny 
fall of home-water on rocks is a thrill. 
On dry duff an empty killdeer egg, 

a tiny hole where something hungry took 
the white and yolk, the embryo of a bird 
I couldn’t name without the internet.
Above, satellites and invisible traffic
of modern life drains what sustains us.

                                                  _________________________________

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is the author of four collections of poetry including most recently the Isabella Gardner Award-winning Transitory (2023), from BOA Editions, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry in 2024, and Surrender of Water in Hidden Places (2023), winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, recently released in a second edition. They are a teaching artist in schools and libraries as well as working with private students individually and in groups. A Queer elder, they live in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land.