These Hazy Days

A Different Tongue

In the darkening afternoon

I watch the small brown ants

summit the cones from the tree

above me, which have fallen to

this picnic table and broken halfway

into dust.

And though I can't see them or

distinctly hear their calls, I feel

there are magpies on the hill.

Thunder rolls for the second time now.

I know

I have been here before.

I place a long pine needle in the

pathway of an ant, but it just

ducks under it.

A rangers station in a remote

and arid valley I have never

before been in -- how do I know it?

The thrushes, conversing with high pitch

among the trees, they want to

tell me why I do, but we

are of a different tongue --

so, restlessly, they don't.