Salt Flat at Low Tide

The salt flat holds the sky like a second thought— pale mirror, cracked at its edges where the earth forgot to hold water.

A heron stands in the middle distance, one leg lifted in a question that the wind never answers. I have known that posture.

Years ago I left a door open in autumn and the cold came in quietly and sat down at the table and did not leave until spring.

Now I walk out where the ground rings hollow underfoot, each step a small bell sounding into bedrock. The heron does not flinch.

It knows what I am only learning: that emptiness is not the absence of the world but the world held very still.