Can I sing a cool creek and slake the ground’s thirst?
I spread my small shadow over parched land.
I open my shadow at noon to parched land.
My friends clamp the barn wall, tugging at shade.
They dream of evening, tugging at shade—
dream crickets riffling streams of moonlight.
Cricketsong riffled cold streams of moonlight,
coyotes pricked my ears. I heard. I drank.
My flopping ears—coyotes sang and I drank.
I want moonlight and song. Soon the land will burn.
I want to sing moonlight. The land will burn.
Thirsty for salt, a butterfly sucks.
A butterfly drinks, thirsting to give.
Can I drink a cool creek and slake the ground’s thirst?
Author’s note: Many species of male butterflies drink from damp sand or mud to replenish minerals necessary to create their spermatophores, which contain not only sperm but also nutrients useful to female butterflies, a “nuptial gift.” Thanks to Jericho Brown for creating the duplex, the form I used for this poem.
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Kelly Fine lives in Austin, Texas, where she is lucky enough to spend several hours a day in a small backyard, working on a laptop in live oak shade. Find more of her writing in venues like Ecotone, Bellingham Review, Confrontation, and 350 Seattle’s climate zines—and more on the Zumwalt prairie in the many Fishtrap anthologies she has contributed to and edited. Kelly’s favorite place in the world is the chaparral at the edge of Altadena, California, her home for many years.
