Quiet Moments
— after a threatened species
Sponsor Message
The desert tortoise makes its way,
not as if she could move mountains;
she is the buttes & saddlebacks themselves
& is too perfect to be a fixed part
of this dust-splashed earth.
She swishes sand, leaving wing-shaped tracks,
& on her back, carries a detailed
topographic map: the delicate lines,
contours of relief,
or manifestations of the gaps
we fill with silence
& other absent declarations.
Together, we hear the hearty hissing
& guttural grunts, warning
us to keep our distance;
at first, we thought the tortoise
was a snake, but we learn
that even our palms,
such unquiet basins,
can ache.
Heather Lang-Cassera is the Clark County poet laureate
