—Legacy Parkway, Salt Lake City, Utah
“The third argument that proponents of the Legacy [Parkway] make is that the project is really environmentally friendly…”
—from a 2007 report by Carlo A. Pedrioli, Barry University
Somehow, driving along this deer sign—
speckled road, your long neck
rising from Earth is a bird. Smoke,
the fog of these wetlands—these wetlands
of thousands and millions and billions of
birds—gathering on your feathers
like so much shattered glass alighting
and giving you the morning glint
I thought I saw. A skunk is dead
for a half second, how its fur swept
under the wind of my car. A field of grass.
Nose sort of tucked into rotting paws,
perfume clinging to the road like your soft
yellow smear to the valley.
How far away, up above the billows or
your long necks, must we go to see
these embankments as a river?
—
Sarah Ann Woodbury lives nestled against the Bear River Mountains, where she writes, researches multispecies justice and environmental sociology, and performs to turn humans toward the living lands and waters of the Intermountain West, especially Great Salt Lake. She was a 2024 writer-in-residence at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, where she wrote full of the breath of old sitka forests and mists. sarah’s recent work can be found in The American Journal of Poetry, CALYX, and Sugar House Review.
