Return

by Penina Ava Taesali-Matthews

Photo by John Lewis Matthews

Return

You are here. Use your good ear. Sense there, high at one-o-clock, on that dead snag, two adult bald eagles. One lifts its head chortling to the sun. Winter rains restore the marsh. We are good here. But two springs ago, the marsh was acres of dried-up clods. No common camas or prairie grasses, no heckling pied-billed grebe or belted kingfisher plunging headfirst into the water. I heard this is normal, that every seven to ten years the marsh redirects itself to irrigate farmland. I wonder. About migrating birds. About seasons disappearing. Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge, founded in 1965, brought back the dusky Canada goose from near extinction. I count their cackling cousins into the thousands. I follow the elegant northern pintails, their tails perfect feathered pens. Think inkwell, page, poem. And if the marsh returns next spring, listen for the long-fluted songs of the meadowlark. 

Penina

Penina Ava Taesali-Matthews’ first collection of poetry, Sourcing Siapo, was published by the University of Hawai’i Press, and her chapbook, SUMMONS: Love Letters for the People, was published by Hawai’i Review. Taesali-Matthews’ work appears in literary journals and anthologies around the world, including Raven Chronicles Anthology, where her poem “One Blood” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives with her husband, John Lewis Matthews, on the Kalapuya Lands of the Willamette Valley.