Migration

Twilight. A crisp Monday. Blue herons
wade through the mudflats, knee
reeds and snags  
into the sigh, pin the shallow waters
into place. Here, a moon will rise and
spill light. No one will note or embrace
the advancing night, or needled stars,
glad within their bones. No sound lifts.
Eagles bulk in hard scythes
above the The Great Salt Lake, carve the dark measure
of waning hours, mark the passage
of godwit and grebe. A tundra Swan
drifts through the flat-shine, loons and plovers stir
in the moon-painted lap, the air fills
with invisible wings. In a place like this
a woman approaching the taste of forty
could pad out in her smooth skin, her unfettered limbs
all angle and flow; one throb
cupped in the palm of heat, her pulse threaded through
like the ache of spring,
and no one would notice.
She could stroke in and out of the brackish water
all night gulping life;
pausing only to wonder at 300
eagles in the cottonwoods girdling Antelope Island,
the gibbous moon behind them
decanting bright ribboned waves
of salt, memories of an ancient sea
before it sank, before
it seeped into the thirsty earth
until only this kettle of blue was left.
She could dip below the silky wrinkle, mouth
the brine and pause, rolling the bitter cold
between tongue and cheek,  
sift it between her teeth, down the length of her throat
then rise to gasp the thinner stuff of air
and release the stifled moan, neither sob nor shout.
She could rise from this slick
and slurried bed, bring her hands up
like a skiff of damselflies, shake the wet
from her hair.
She could scoop the water to her lips
and gulp the years flavored rich with green,
and rot and marsh, the same years
that swell in ranks behind her, flatten
now into ripples - or she could turn
and strike out, the deep waters
stinging against her breast, brine shrimp
phosphorescing softly beneath her, out past the herons,  
and eagles, the island
with its slumped, disinterested face, toward the egress
beyond, the slow migration home.

Kim Welliver lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. She writes both poetry and novel length fiction. Her poetry can be found in 2RiverView, The Green Tricycle, Eclectica, The Horsethief's Journal, Stirring, Samsara, Ygsdrasil, Little Brown Poetry, The Poetry Superhighway, Poetry Repair Shop, as well as an assortment of other electronic journals, and several regional anthologies.