Scavenger Language

A gull swerves and pulls around
as its white body, curved beak,
and dark-tipped finger-wings
wheel above the green garbage
troughs where each night we haul
bags out and leave
them for removal.

Along the highway, I name the plants
as they scratch and dry
and break themselves against
the sky. On the one hand,
a person can imagine those plants
with the dunes and tides of the shore.
On the other, used and worn,
these plants are as nature
intended and I take the names of
other more cherished flora and transfer
them: parsley, lilac, mustard,
coleus. One year, I
saw the road kill as regular punctuation
marking miles for this or that sedan, four-
wheeler, jeep, SUV. Another year, stuck
among the fumes, I watched crows visit
the corpses and go for the soft tissue
first: the eyes, maybe

with a gnat trapped in its gaze. This
year -- this year, I can't even
tell what the animals are and again I
steal names: serval, marmoset, wallaby,
crane. Why stop there? I could use
more names: Kickapoo, Mohawk, Jew,
Croat, Hutu, American. This scavenger language I speak
was brought and bought as a child,
when the child
was a gull and

knew the muscles of the sea and the detritus
left there as if it were a pure sustenance --
a clean language.

Copyright Louise Robertson