For a moment in the calm, between gusts of wind: the faint push of air beneath wing. The northern harrier drifts above a flowering field of yellow mustard.
Bobbing among the eddies, the murre learn centuries of the waterwork and currents, driven unthinking by what we cannot know.
Farther still, the north horizon is choked with fog; the clover lies trampled by salt wind along the clifftop. I turn my face into the sun. Were it not for some small burning ember, I’d have lifted my arms and fallen into the sea.
POET BIO:
Award-winning author and Pushcart Prize nominee, California poet Bri Bruce has been deemed the "heiress of Mary Oliver." With a bachelor’s degree in literature and creative writing from the University of California at Santa Cruz, her work has appeared in dozens of anthologies, magazines, and literary publications, including The Sun Magazine, Northwind Magazine, The Soundings Review, and The Monterey Poetry Review, among many others. Bruce is the recipient of the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize and the Pushpen Press Pendant Prize for Poetry, and is the author of four books.