Finally your home

Half Moon Bay

Finally your home has changed
it has been coming with a limp
a long conveyance of moving soil
it was an immense creature with no eyes
trucking like a glacial till across the land
blanketed and abandoned in blossoming white
it came like the erosion of the beach heads
without violence but impossible to relent
there was a place then that is now
the meadow in your first letters
you think about this transition
it comes to you in small creatures
when you are standing in the fields
and your feet are wet because the fields are low
and the air is washed, the light is mute
the season is turning in slow strains
and the fields have been swept up into knots
combed by wind and stacked in rain
and your own hair is now long
and your eyes are now stones
you find it hard to think about where you will die
or the day of your birth with its tremors
its cracking ice, its cold high clouds
the long moment of your initiating breath
it came to you, and it was by will, your own will
that you came to us fighting
you actually gasped
in the swale you find a dog's bones
there are flowers in its eyes
leaves between the ribs, and you find a crow's wing
but the grasses are fluttering, the weeds rattle
how do you say all of this
that you are immersed among the birds?