MALLARD DUCK<\/p>\n
We were hunted here generations ago;
\nit was a matter of principle<\/p>\n
and dark pleasure to exterminate us one by one.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve lived in the long aftermath,
\nyou know why<\/p>\n
you looked in vain for us at the reserve today.<\/p>\n
They call us an invasive species.<\/p>\n
Perhaps they are right\u2014
\nI should not speak for all of us<\/p>\n
but I have not yet lost faith
\nthat we too may find our place among the races on this earth.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
AMERICAN COOTS<\/p>\n
We amused you today,
\npaddling in wide loops in the tidal estuary,
\nme and my five hatchlings.<\/p>\n
So urgently purposive we seemed to be,
\nmoving in a strict, arcing line in the water<\/p>\n
until one of the little ones
\nbroke the spell of seriousness<\/p>\n
by following another direction impetuously
\nand we became again a chaotic family,<\/p>\n
unsure of the force of the rules binding us together,
\nlike any other.<\/p>\n
I think the same thing brought both of us to this wetland\u2014
\nan idea of peace,
\na place to help us keep our commitments.<\/p>\n
But what happened to you
\nwhen all five hatchlings disappeared under water<\/p>\n
one at a time,
\neach following another by some instinct
\nneither of us understands,<\/p>\n
and you watched me, the lone parent among the wild birds here,
\nsolitary gray on the vast gray of the water
\nfor what seemed a full minute\u2014<\/p>\n
that wasn\u2019t peace you felt\u2014
\nthat was freedom.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
COASTAL SUNSET<\/p>\n
You want to leave already.
\nStrange, the stories of those who find my sadness<\/p>\n
too much to bear.
\nThat is not why you want to leave.<\/p>\n
Nor are you afraid of what I will
\nremind you of.<\/p>\n
You believe in progress\u2014it is simple as that.
\nWe disagree.<\/p>\n
I will make you an offer:
\nYou stay until I am ready to release you<\/p>\n
and I will give you a haunting image of my sister,
\nthe estuary at dawn.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
PIGEON<\/p>\n
I like human beings\u2014
\nyou understand what I\u2019m trying to say.<\/p>\n
I like how
\nthe miracle of human consciousness
\nso often seems ordinary to them,<\/p>\n
how they walk past each other
\nas if there were nothing remarkable in them at all.<\/p>\n
That deep, creaturely cooing that I make
\nperched on a beam under the walkway
\nas they pass\u2014<\/p>\n
I know it reminds them somewhat eerily
\nof the universals of human experience,<\/p>\n
music and mothering\u2014<\/p>\n
it is uncanny because it is supposed to be,
\nmy heartening critique.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SNOWY EGRET<\/p>\n
You think the image you captured
\nof me alone in the eelgrass<\/p>\n
means something because when you came close
\non the walkway bridge
\nI didn\u2019t leave you standing there bereft?<\/p>\n
You believe what generations of boyish men
\nhave believed about faithfulness.<\/p>\n
Look,
\nlook at all this\u2014
\nthe only word for it is beautiful,<\/p>\n
the living surface of the planes of water
\nand the sheer joy
\nin its blinding lovemaking with the sun,<\/p>\n
everything you missed studying me
\nas I stood watching prey in the water unmoving,
\na vessel for your art.<\/p>\n
And now you want me to show it to you,
\nnow that we both have left
\nthis corner of paradise\u2014<\/p>\n
experience is a far better teacher for you now\u2014
\nshe has some faith left in you.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SALTGRASS<\/p>\n
I live on
\nwhat kills others like me.<\/p>\n
The wetlands that have been destroyed
\nby civilization,<\/p>\n
and the remade, the intact\u2014
\nthey are all my natural beds.<\/p>\n
The secret to surviving the inrush
\nof salt from the ocean<\/p>\n
is to let it pass right through you\u2014
\nit is like solving a difficult riddle:<\/p>\n
the mistake of so many
\nis to see in it a part of themselves.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BOTTLE<\/p>\n
You trouble yourself
\nwith your incessant doubts about the afterlife.<\/p>\n
I represent your deeper fear,
\nthe one your dread of nothingness
\nis a screen against.<\/p>\n
I will outlive this estuary,
\neroding slowly over centuries, floating wherever
\nthe currents take me.<\/p>\n
I have been loved by nothing but myself.<\/p>\n
I hate the world that made me:
\nI wish with a burning resentment against my fate
\nthat I had never been.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SNOWY PLOVER<\/p>\n
We have been warned
\nto consider the dangers of fake wisdom\u2014<\/p>\n
hated by poets
\nI suppose because it is a guardian of ignorance,<\/p>\n
the inverse of the sanctuaries
\nprotected for us on the southern coast of California,<\/p>\n
where the poets can go months without seeing any of us
\nand can bear uncertainty\u2014<\/p>\n
They call it negative capability:
\nimagination as a habitat,<\/p>\n
a coastal garden
\nwhere the living heart rests in its quest to survive.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SNOWY PLOVER<\/p>\n
And because there are many of us
\nwe cannot speak with one voice.<\/p>\n
It is like their theory of money\u2014
\nthat because the desire for it can explain human behavior<\/p>\n
there must be no other motives involved.<\/p>\n
They are the sentimental ones, you know.
\nThe dunes of Bolsa Chica<\/p>\n
change with imperceptible slowness
\nnot because they are made of sand
\nbut because the wind here<\/p>\n
disappears and reappears from elsewhere,
\na calling to each of us.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
MOUNT SADDLEBACK<\/p>\n
You like moments
\nwhen deep feeling carefully finds expression,<\/p>\n
the traces in its play
\nof subtlety and nuance,
\nbuds in the black branches you seek out and remember.<\/p>\n
So you covet the authority of the observer:<\/p>\n
let me remind you, friend,
\nthat your father is one among the shades
\nyou love so intensely\u2014<\/p>\n
you have not yet said to the world anything
\nhe can be well remembered by.<\/p>\n
The creative imagination is simply
\nan alibi for you.<\/p>\n
The difference between a society and its culture
\nis like the difference between<\/p>\n
an ordinary father and his brilliant child\u2014<\/p>\n
so say I, a mountain that has seen three empires,
\nwaiting, patiently, for you to ascend\u2014<\/p>\n
patiently, as you read on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
THE SEAGULL<\/p>\n
Are you ready for absence yet?\u2014
\nso asked the seagull.<\/p>\n
Her white wings were spread wide open
\nto receive the air,<\/p>\n
her body shadowless
\non an overcast afternoon.<\/p>\n
So a lover opened herself to me, once,
\nwordlessly\u2014
\nher legs stretched out beneath my thrusting form,<\/p>\n
as if straining to receive me whole,
\nto welcome me.<\/p>\n
Art can haunt,
\nand flight is an art\u2014<\/p>\n
its meaning to mortals is clear and incontrovertible
\nwhen it is framed by our desire.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BROWN PELICAN<\/p>\n
I marvel at you humans
\nwho mate for life.<\/p>\n
Do you feel you must?<\/p>\n
Perhaps if you could fly things would be different.<\/p>\n
I am not a beautiful bird,
\nI do not promise anyone happiness\u2014<\/p>\n
I make predictions,\u2014<\/p>\n
that art is how
\nI know when to rip up the tranquil surface and find life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
ESTUARY PROSPECT<\/p>\n
Benches: four of them,
\na semi-circular pattern, no more than a quarter mile into the reserve
\nfrom the north gate parking lot\u2014<\/p>\n
you can hear very well from there
\nthe cars racing by on the Korean war veterans\u2019 highway,
\nthe way we all come and go.<\/p>\n
From above the benches must look
\nlike the arms of a vast lyre of dirt.<\/p>\n
From there you can hear
\nthe mullet leap through the sub-tidal water\u2019s surface\u2014<\/p>\n
some say their dreams only whisper in shards,
\nsome say every poem is an artifice,
\nthe end\u2014<\/p>\n
I have long known that poets first think of their last poem on waking,<\/p>\n
but now I see that there is only
\nthe one poem,<\/p>\n
the unfinished hymn that sings them through.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
MUDFLATS<\/p>\n
My great sadness is
\nthat the life I know returns like the clouds.<\/p>\n
At ebb-tide
\nthey have a touching patience with me\u2014
\nmy softness, my secrets.<\/p>\n
Yet I am made
\nto be visible to them only in ordinary time\u2014
\nthey keep for the marsh-ground<\/p>\n
their bodily trust,
\ntheir deepest passion,
\nthe bonded pairs.<\/p>\n
My secret is
\nhow cautiously all species evolve\u2014<\/p>\n
the single tern from the marshes
\nmeans more to me
\nthan he does to nature,<\/p>\n
but I cannot tell him so\u2014<\/p>\n
my silence is a language
\nforgotten like friendship at the end of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MALLARD DUCK We were hunted here generations ago; it was a matter of principle and dark pleasure to exterminate us one by one. You\u2019ve lived in the long aftermath, you know why you looked in vain for us at the reserve today. They call us an invasive species. Perhaps they are right\u2014 I should not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"parent":113,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-116","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/116\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/bglaser\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}