Río Chamita
Mule deer browse in the meadow
and meander in clusters down the slope
across a dry pond bed;
at a shooting range, we stare at a machine
loaded with orange-centered circular targets
but are not here to practice firing at ducks;
you climb a metal ladder, sit
on a bench high in a ponderosa pine,
and, gazing far, say hunters shoot from here;
we step onto a floating dock, while swallows
scissor the air, loop back,
fuchsia-streaked clouds undulate on the water;
and when we canoed around a floating island of reeds,
I understood we came here
to ignite behind our eyelids—
a yellow-headed blackbird perches on a cattail;
beyond a green metal fence, buffalo graze—
while water runs into this pond, before it spills
over a metal gate into the Río Chamita,
we gather our lives in this pooling—
Originally published in Michigan Quarterly Review Online. Copyright © 2021 by Arthur Sze. Used with the permission of the poet.