Salt Flat at the Hour of No Shadow

The white plain holds the sky like a bowl holds water— carefully, and without knowing it.

A hawk crosses the high blue and its shadow crosses the crust below, twin birds briefly hinged at the foot. Nothing else moves in this hour.

I have stood here long enough that the heat has erased my edges, that I cannot say where the air stops and the waiting begins.

Somewhere behind me, a car door. A child calls out a name and the name travels flat and far before the silence swallows it whole.

We were passing through. We are still passing through. The salt remembers every rain that fell and gave itself up for this whiteness.