I have been reading this watershed
for twenty years —
which bend the water favors in late April,
where herons stand so still
they become weather.

Now the creek runs a direction
I don’t remember learning to follow.
The sedge has moved its edge.
A tree I loved fell in silence.

I press my ear to the same soil —
iron, rot, the faint sweetness
of things breaking down into other things.
Something answers,
but only as vibration.

Even the light falls
at an angle I can’t quite locate.

I am a naturalist
who no longer recognizes her own map.

I walk the old paths anyway,
notebook open.

— Jean Kiernan Detjen