Places to look for Ellen Meloy: a poem by Ann Weiler Walka

In the glitter of a raven's eye
A toad's inflated throat
The longest toe of a heron's track

By the river early and late
In sunlight circling on water
Candles burning on driftwood rafts

Drinking tea at the crest
of the sandstone wave
looking down on swifts

Or the swale above the broccoli tree
water-coloring
with the artful ladies

In the haze
of drunken bees
swarming the cliff rose

Perched on a dim sum cliff
watching last light split
a steel gray sky

In the Pleistocene
The Holocene
A doorway in a hand-built wall

In the crack
where the procession enters
the stone

Or in the library
in the rare book room
imagining home

Coming out to pick lettuce
and scold rabbits
or cool off in the claw-foot tub

At the kitchen window
chopping tomatoes
looking over the cottonwoods

In the writing shed
as first light swallows the stars
and anything is possible

Scoping ewes and their long-legged
kids from the edge of Lime Ridge
Crossing the river into wild eyes

In the rain in the farm-field
while the geese fly up
calling

I hope readers will add new places to search out this incandescent spirit who burns bright in so many corners of our lives - Ann Weiler Walka