Sense of Direction

A union organizer's compass and a poet's heart --

drifting across fields and battlezones as if they are the same --

a little banjo music tending the flute of the ear, a little drift

on an ancient riverway, wondering where it comes in

to the saltmarsh, the ecotone of bliss.

I don't know what form it will take,

how it will rise, like the Great Blue Heron, slow

or straight to wing like the Bald Eagle, never accustomed

to leaving the talons in the mud.  A ripple across the water

is all that's left, and the tribunal of the black stark

meeting against the white, while on the edges

just the snowcaps and the dark, open branches,

the forest outreaching draws us skyward from the swamp.