Rebecca A. Spears

The Migratory Seasons

Golden plovers, in the migratory seasons,
fly for days, seemingly tireless,
over open ocean,
from Alaska to Hawaii,
no place to land along the way.

Yet they know it’s time to move on,
to balmy, green islands.

It’s a wonder—few creatures
are capable of this. A slow-wave drowse,
catnapping in flight, this curious trick—

keeping one eye open,
one brain-hemisphere alert
while the other side drops into sleep,
letting the other eye close down.

We humans can hardly approximate
this state—and only in our troubled rest—

one hemisphere slow-sleeps while
the other half-dreams in shallows
of a turgid river, going nowhere.

In such states, the body feels
so restless that by morning, we
scarcely feel like ourselves
and can’t move easily into the day.

On good nights, sleep wants us
to discover how to find an old friend,
and on what search engine. A deep-dive
into our interior rooms—

and we probe the possibilities
for a new relationship,
a fresh start,
or a way to solve an old problem.

Not often, we feel an airy uplift,
and are quickly carried aloft—the start
of our own migratory season.

San Marcos Springs

Each time I dive into the green pools
toward the white rocks
legs kick and tangle in chilled ribbons
of spring water and
plunging down and down

I force open my eyes. In the flash of the dive
I might as well be blind
water shifting and bubbling, fingers
tearing on fossil imprints
at bottom, the cost

for just missing my skull
and rare blind salamanders
I’ve sent turning like verses on the water’s vellum.
This is a rough register of what it feels like
to live extravagantly

at the end of an era—
never the same body disappearing into the green
or holding its breath, then beginning
its rise to surface. Bits of it
sloughing

into the springs, feeding the source,
the uncommon life forms
collected under cypress knees on either bank,
sun drawing freely from these springs
into thunderheads above the shoals.

Rebecca A. Spears, author of Brook the Divide (Unsolicited Press, 2020) and The Bright Obvious (Finishing Line Press, 2009), has her poems and essays included in TriQuarterly, Calyx, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Verse Daily, and other journals and anthologies. A writer, living in the Piney Woods of East Texas, she has received awards from the Taos Writers Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, Dairy Hollow House, and most recently, the Open Door Poetry Fellowship at Porches Writing Retreat. Brook the Divide was shortlisted for Best First Book of Poetry (Texas Institute of Letters).