Along the playa

Friday May 14th, at Playa

There’s a little fold of darkness cleaning up the last of the stars off the pond. In between it devours whatever insect will feed its minute body. I finally have slowed its movement, its near pattern, to identify bat. Off to the side a duck makes a noise like a stern uncle, a deep tsk, tsk and then, as though on cue, a body splashes into the water, muskrat I say. The sun seems reluctant to rise with so much song, so much movement. In this predawn ring of light and darkness over the pond the sky is mirrored in perfect contour and I grow dizzy trying to remember which way I stand.

The playa smells like France when the tide goes out (sans fish) or France smells like playa in spring (sans coyote scat). The cracked bed of sand and grit and alkali rolls into cups the closer you get to the lake and under each the world is softer and softer until you sink a bit as though everything underneath wants to escape or swallow you.

 

The alkali dries into ribs
& spine, long bones
along the playa
 
just this morning
as I walked as far
as the wet
would allow
 
I saw long lines
of things running
above the water
geese or crane or
something prehistorically older
 
dragon or another
beast lost to myth
& then the whale jaw
whole, reimagined
out of dust
 
surfaced among barb wire
rust & fence posts
covered white