Christina Burress
       atlatl

Atoll closes and unites sand
two bodies playing in moon’s pull
San Dieguito scraper-maker

river valley flint shaper
where aqua bleeds salt marsh
a ferry crosses to homesteader’s General Store

of goods and No.1 cigars
later witness to fill dirt and tractors
churning grasshopper wings

to tees and greens,
a fools’ expanse doom and drown
to putter’s follow through.

Grand Avenue bridge crosses lagoon
connecting riparian wonder
two mooring circles, blimps on the screen

gravel road to nowhere
estuary swallows airport slabs
Least Turns and Light Footed Clapper Rails

resident and itinerant birds
fly by wires, a throwback
amidst plotting progression

Who’s mapping this continuous obliteration?
white egret wings
outstretch

in alluvial fan
along fen
final resting place

without head
skeletal reticence
speaks essential noblesse

everything foreign
alters ecology
non-native species

nature out of place
West Nile virus
Western Russian Zebra mussel

English Ivy
Sea Fig “Freeway” plant
land developers

nuclear plants
intake damn populate
it’s like war here.

Vanessa cardui
wanderer here
transmigrator

painted lady
full of grace
floating flying

forty miles of fourteen foot fencing
steel landscape freeways
architects of free world

Mariposa’s parade
immigrant explorers
migrant workers

all dreamers follow ghostly paths
eat thistles, mallows, nettles
fragrant pheromones on the move

lay eggs on shrubs
on slender sleeves of city trees
in sweeping shows of grace