The Missouri Plateau
is a principle flyway for waterfowl.
On April 4th, 2016, the FAA temporarily granted
TransCanada’s request for a no-fly zone over the entire
region surrounding their Keystone I pipeline spill.
In the near gold hour
when the sky crackles with color
and each tree, anonymous in a crowd,
screeches for pebbled light,
an egret feather, and
the membrane wings of a butterfly are fused
to a vacant crest of sticks and mud
strung between a blue-
green pond
where water bugs once
threw summer shadows, but is now burned
blue-black,
and a slender stream, rimmed
in seedy grasses.
Let the spirit of a wolf
remember the wolf.
If we needed these, we did not
know it.