The land is an ark, full of things waiting.
Underfoot it goes temporary and soft, tracks
filling with water as the foot is raised.
The fields, sodden, go free of plans. Hands
become obscure in their use, prehistoric.
The mind passes over changed surfaces
like a boat, drawn to the thought of roofs
and to the thought of swimming and wading birds.
Along the river croplands and gardens
are buried in the flood, airy places grown dark
and silent beneath it. Under the slender branch
holding the new nest of the hummingbird
the river flows heavy with earth, the water
turned the color of broken slopes. I stand
deep in the mud of the shore, a stake
planted to measure the rise, the water rising,
the earth falling to meet it. A great cottonwood
passes down, the leaves shivering as the roots
drag the bottom. I was not ready for this
parting, my native land putting out to sea.