Territory

Territory

Every one of us has a sparrow
underneath her tongue,
bouncing back and burrowing.

On the crest of a spared mountain,
we can barely say, Sleep well,
to the full night of open obsidian and owls.

We long gone tree-leaners
raised on poison oak and poppies
make our way to the creek bed.

We come to lie down again,
our flightless selves in the river rocks,
to bear witness.

What impossible longing.
Black oak and manzanita looming
in the nest of this natural home.

Cowbird and grackle, black phoebe.
Every one of us with a bear inside
(a scorpion, a rattlesnake).

Our danger is calmed
by our watermelon sun,
by instinct.

(Acknowledge the dirt
beneath us, expect nothing.)

We are vine and hummingbird,
eucalyptus root and centipede,
junco and blue-belly lizard.

(And sometimes the drowned deer,
and sometimes the trapped opossum,
the wayward dog, the wayward dog.)

But a little tree dust on the mountain
and the chest finds its bird again,
laughing loud on its juniper and wisteria.

And listen, even we non-fighters
know what a precious territory is
when we see it. Soon, we'll say,

Tongue-sparrows, flinting
like well-carved arrows,
fly into the yellow foxtail 

and rye we were raised on.
Alluvial soil, this claim we call
our own, take us back in.
 
Ada Limón