From the sky, your clusters of brine shrimp eggs          
         huddle and drift into thick brown swirls                      
                     like pools of chocolate milk. You, mother
to millions, amniotic sac waiting to hatch           
         innumerable legs, flat and upright,                       
                     that paddle and push tiny boats
of creatures toward each other.            
            You are buoyancy of bodies                       
                      toppled with light. You are love potion.

From the sky you are the brightest glint,          
          shine of a gum wrapper, a wild lick                      
                     across our desert face. From the sky you are
a lost child. I bring my children to you         
          and something primordial breathes                     
                     under our feet. My sons wear
your salty crust, your brush         
          of mineral across their bare and freckled legs                    
                    all the long drive home. They sleep inside

your mottled and endless light.         
        You are the place                   
                   that held me while I listened
to the meadowlark’s song         
         on a Spring afternoon so wide                   
                    and long that nothing but the wind
in the brown grass         
        and that single bird                 
                 moved. You are the heart of stillness,
heart of lark and coyote, pink heart

of Floyd, the flamingo who fled                       
                      the Salt Lake aviary and lived                                   
                                   in the heart of you
for years, migrating then returning,                         
                          a sighting of him like a flash                                      
                                      of pink, a thump in the chest,            
             a one-legged valentine                           
                            lost in blue.

Note from the poet: For me, Antelope Island is a place of magic, where light is caught and reflected in every direction, and underneath is always that almost mythical lake, opening the earth into another sky. And a day I spent with my family one Spring a couple of years ago, listening to meadowlarks near the lake, is still one of my most cherished memories.