Killdeer!
I see your fluttering wings
I hear your call on the wind
Ki-ki-ki.
Killdeer!
I didn't know about the orange you wear around your eyes
I have not payed close enough attention
Forgive me.
Killdeer!
Do you know this place is damned?
Do you know about the white gold under your feet?
Lithium, worth so much it makes men into monsters.
Killdeer!
What of the next generation?
What will you return to after your next migration?
Open pit mines and ponds of poison.
Killdeer!
They say you are protected by law
"The Migratory Bird Protection Act"
But what does that mean when your home is destroyed?
Killdeer!
You nest in fields and on rooftops
And even so, there are fewer of you every year
What will we do when you are gone?
Killdeer!
Can you teach us to fly?
Can you teach us how to make our nests?
You know far more than us
Killdeer!
The hole you dig for your nest disappears in the first storm
The hole we dig for a mine scars for millennia
Who is the intelligent one?
Killdeer!
You carry my heart on your strong wings
I carry your eggs in my memory
Hatching resistance
Land of green sage and blueberry skies
I have loved you in every season
From blizzards to heat waves
Watching your lizards in the sun
sage-grouse dancing in your folds
Pronghorn stepping gently across your skin
Cougar tracks high on your mountainsides
Newly hatched birds nesting on your skin
as fragile as the quiet
You have shared some secrets with me
And so I know you
And you know me
My tears have soaked into your soil
My snot is smeared on your rocks
My blood has dripped into your dirt
You have seen my courage and
My weakness
And my fear
I am the spectrum of humanity passing over you
As we always have
cold hearts and warm,
broken minds
and pure souls
You are the pathway
Route through the mountains
Snow-gatherer
water giver
Place of deep shadows
and harsh dry winds
I walk your paths
And find stones and bones
rabbit, owl, deer
and shattered human skeletons
Still holding onto those last moments of fear
slipping into eternity as sagebrush whispers prayers back to the dying
the last thing they ever saw was the wind in the ghost pipe
Ancestors of the ones who grow there today
human child and plant child
We say we are here to save the land
But it is you who saves us
we owe you everything
We honor you
And I am afraid for you
greed has come and his ego is bigger
than his heart
He is armed
And dangerous
I have loved you in every season
And I don't want this to be the last