Such Small Wanderers
By Heather Lang-Cassera
Previously published in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Issue 22
Not wanting to care
for the pigeons,
their patterns of negative night sky bodies,
not wanting to love
their heart-curved flesh,
too large for the dry riverbeds
of my hands,
not wanting to justify my unshadowed
tenderness for something
buoyed and overripe and understanding
of her own need,
and surrounded by silent songbirds,
not wanting two wings almost identical
in symmetry, shadows
that strangulate the ground,
not wanting invisible tongues
of perfect pink oleander
forever pressing onward
even in this arid sky—
a birth cry, a death breathing, an intangible
sun, a heap of inconsolable hope
available only from yesterdays,
these fingers become bandages
for everything
in my body that might someday be broken,
the obscurity of other blunt souls
dredges bee pollen
as bright sorrow,
horizons as weeping everything,
murmurs as fragile bundles,
anguish illuminated
in each of these
exquisite gallopings.
Photo by Ronda Churchill.
Heather Lang-Cassera is a Clark County, Nevada Poet Laureate Emeritus (2019-2021); a 2022 Nevada Arts Council Literary Arts Fellow; a publisher and editor for Tolsun Books; and a lecturer with Nevada State College where she teaches College Success, Creative Writing, Professional Editing and Publishing, and more. Her book, Gathering Broken Light (Unsolicited Press, 2021), was written with the support of a Nevada Arts Council Project Grant, and all royalties go to the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center. Learn more about Heather and her poetry at: heatherlang.cassera.net.