The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2022

26 The Meadow Those Seen Driving West Melanie Perish We travel California 37, Sears Point Road inland past Vallejo, the sky smooth with raw-silk clouds. Through my window flats near the overpass. There may be birds, but I see three small tents, one patched with duct tape; a man wearing two coats, carries a duffle, a plastic sack. Marks of ragged, no wings in sight. You look out your window, think you see a raft of canvasbacks, but we are late. You wonder if you will ever be able to show me the locked-lace and waxy feathers up close. We see no spindle-legged sanderling, no deep diving duck. Some lives are not wild, but both visible and invisible. Are they forgotten? It is too late for yellow-headed blackbirds to mate and raise young. Dirty white deli-bags blight the roadside, blur by. A leather-faced woman walks the narrow dirt shoulder. Her back to us, she pulls at her camo jacket, adjusts the straps of her pack. Ahead, a turn twists like rope through belt loops, like the serpentine neck of a heron. We stop for gas and bathrooms before Guadal Canal Village. You read me facts about salt ponds, terns, a snowy something. I do not see most of what you say.

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