By Penel Alden
A piercing cry cuts through the canyon’s stillness
A hawk
Whose aerial circles are seen only in fragments
Elevated above the mountain’s old oaks
You’ve seen their beginning
At first sparse punctuating across the hills
West of the highway
But have you seen their heart
At the center of veins
Dirt marked by the tracks of
Tires and coyotes?
Thick in the ravine trees eager to scrape
Their dancing limbs against
The sun sweet marbled sky
Inaudible is the cry that cuts through the canyon
The curve of my eyes leaned up to the pastel firmament
The vulnerable pink skin under nails
Pointed upwards between sight and sun
My limbs are also dancing
Penel Alden is a mediocre and degenerate academic living on California’s central coast. Her recent poetry has appeared in Sierra Nevada Review, California Quarterly, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and in her forthcoming collection, California (Kelsay Books, 2021).
