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37 "A camping trip could be good for what ails you--help take your mind off the nightmare," offered Whitman, animated, anticipating. At this trip's first campground dawn a wild alarm clock awakens us; last evening that goose paddled and waddled right up to Whit as we sat with his-and-her binoculars at our campsite's edge, the Rio Grande. This morning, among burnt-orange tamarisks, from down sleeping bags Whit's mother made to be zipped together, he and I view formations of sandhill cranes crooning, as humans do over a cradle. Before breakfast we recognize kingfisher calls! We rush to the river. Sure enough-- not just one halcyon but two: a male, like the one I saw at the bayou, and a female (a breast band of bluish gray and a rufous sash). Alcyone's husband, Ceyx, drowned. When he washed toward the shore where she watched for him, she threw herself into the sea. Moved by her grief, the gods and goddesses reunited the two as kingfishers, rising from the dark waters. |
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Issue #33, June, 2003 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.