Three Poems by Mare Heron Hake

So Near and Over Me

They are there in the shadowed underbrush,
              the little dark hollow an avian cradle
of wild Rhododendron leaves and pine needles
              fallen to mold a few months back.

I hear the flit and fleet, the sure movements
              of some little juncos breaking a tiny snap,
a kew and the pecks, and their alarm calls
              blend to the wet ground, almost a whisper.

What do they see—as I, by their heads, can’t hold
              more than their sound. Their slate color moves
through blackened branches without a trace left behind.
              Not flying, but quick-hopping
on skinny toes just able to hold them, cradle
              my lovely cradle of mud, the last of winter and a shuffled twig,
they sing in fast pips. Their fragile throats trill
              so near and over me, standing by the flock, and I
am rooted— knowing they will move on
              just as soon as I look away, for the juncos
are the leaves filling the forest in this private season.

Wingtip to Wingtip

They span above and across the road in one long, wide ribbon, a river of bird. An arcing, undulating movement, a murmur of audible rubbing from wingtip to wingtip, a darkening stretch for a mile, more, from one undone side of the valley to the other, coming they come, forward they move, in the falling sunset, the gloaming, this wet dusk of fungus growing. Here they are, an eruption of simultaneous crows made blacker in shifting silhouette than the branches, and can one see just one beating heart, when as one their current reforms? Shuddering wider, deeper, they do not collide for more than a moment, they do not fall to the ground, they fly with purpose. The once hollow air a solid thing in their presence, rising like a heavy lump in the choked throat and touch wing to breast to arm, leg, belly, or fin, with a gasp that can’t be explained but only given-in, connected, with feather and tooth and hard-hooved foot, given-in for fear of all is lost and don’t look away or how dare you because the trees here have been cut down, the stream submerged, the cows removed or killed. Everything must change, even what it means to die. Still. They rise, express nothing but night, and my eyes, my nose, my skin, with the cold steam of my breath, know how it is… a body so large it could eat the sky, swallow the hidden moon with a mindful peck if it ever felt the need to be reckoned with, and it deserves to be hungry for we have eaten it all.

At Ruby Beach

I grabbed it
in the tidal zone of voices
moving back and forth
the form born in water

and my fingers were cold blue
from the foaming touch
of a surf surging as the little feet
of anxious sandpipers skittered

against the pounding and I held
the small rock of ages and quieted
lava not made of clay 
this came out of fire and seethed
hissing before dormancy
before the glacier rode it flat
and ate it all
into sand in the human palm
in the pocket and the folds
of my fullest raw hand

and I rub it to my lips this smooth pebble
of centuries this old ocean imbedded
in the tale-telling and taste
of the salted and wild air my truth