Jennifer Rood

Desert Tableau, Fort Rock, Oregon

Spray of feathers.
Last flight flown.
Bird no more.

Rodent skull bleached to chalk,
with tiny teeth, still sharp.
No more gnawing.
No more scurrying
under sage and stone.

Half of a red fox, back leg broken
under the ledge where it crawled to die.
Tail intact, white-tipped
fur waving in the gray wind.

Rain and wind scour rock;
freeze and thaw shatter, break, crumble.
Stone. Pebble. Sand. Dust.

Don’t we all lay our bones down
eventually
and not always gently?

Like when I
moved diagonally
down that rocky slope
to mitigate the steep angle of it
to keep myself upright
and my left foot
‌‌                            slipped?
Whirling around, I caught myself
but bent and touched the ground
with both hands.
It was a reminder.
In a moment, a slip became a bow
of reverence and recognition
of the inevitable.

In good time, we all slip, fall, return.
Gravity has its way
and winter does its wild work.

Jennifer Rood is enjoying life in Southern Oregon, where she recently retired from 30 years of teaching high school English, art, and social studies. She has served as a Board Member of the Oregon Poetry Association (including a year as President in 2020-21), and last fall, she spent five weeks as the Oregon Caves National Monument’s Artist in Residence. Her most recently published individual poems appear in The Literary Hatchet and Verseweavers. Present and Speaking Everywhere (Not a Pipe Publishing, 2024) is her newest collection of found poetry and art.