Self-Portrait in a Borrowed Town

A poem can have dense undergrowth
like west of the pass, or its trees can rise
out of a forest floor with little but
owl pellets for distraction - a stark relief.

Time's instruments are wind chime,
hammer, kiwi and small child.
Baby Quinn holds the ball with two hands,
nine and three, like she held the biggest
tomato growing in the oak barrel.

On the brown couch aslant from the window
an Agency Lake view between the poplars.
I can be murky and miserable as my mother
as ebullient as any grebe. I sit alone
in this borrowed cabin on this borrowed couch.
I don't see the big bald in the big poplar
but I saw three on power poles above
the railroad tracks beside Upper Klamath Lake
on the way to K Falls, and a lone egret
leaning forward in a field.

Clouds settle over the Klamaths, like
a soothing blanket drawn up to your chin,
warming and quieting this worrisome world.
Walking the beach this morning
to small plane drone, the water flat
as melted margarine. When the sun was
done with the hot pink fun of breaking
the horizon the hills dulled lighter than
themselves as though this new day
had already taxed their energy, fading
them.

I watched through binoculars as
a Townsend's Solitaire foraged
for insects on the poplar trunk, picking
them off as the Birds of Oregon said
they do though the size may have been
wrong and my bird was definitely
darker than the drawing. Was it
a Flicker? Absolutely not. I despair
of ever gaining confidence I know
what I am seeing when I am
watching birds. A gang of the same
kind of bird - two, then
three, four, fall like leaves, land,
and move up the tree. They
have to be Flickers.