The Muses as Flamingos In the predawn desolation of the salt marsh you wait. Tidal pools seethe— life eating itself over and over. You wait, a little chilled, not entirely hopeless, simply present, waiting. Because the limitless, grey emptiness sometimes splits, and they pound in, the sky suddenly awash in pink. The long necks stretched forward, the long, backward-bending legs stretched out behind, and the glorious wide wings, their firecracker orange undersides edged with crepe, lift and press against the air, their very motion improbable.
—Submitted on 09/24/2022
Meryl Natchez is the author of Catwalk (Longship Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Rappahannock Review, Canary Lit Mag, and other journals.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
