Sound to Her Is a Flight

of ducks in the evening—a great beating        of wings, blurred motion. Sorbet and lavender

        soaring away, water bursting into white edges like laceforming crisp curves. Her sister points like a bird

hound. Among pond reeds they crouch in mud        and listen. One hears

        the eager whisper of rushes, the flutter of her ownlaughter. The other listens to the tightness of her sister's

fingers wrapped around her arm, hums deep        in her chest to herself. The reeds sound the same way

        water feels when it winds through herfingers: soft and supple as down, as a duck's

liquid brown eyes, deep and still        between the green-blue-red slant of light.

        Her sister's fingers find her elbow. Skin warmas home, asking nothing. The ducks

calling. The sky reaching        beneath them.