Passing Through

If a question rustles in the grasses.
If a hunger hankers after, if a rasping
intonation of a something curling there.
If footprints follow a path through a village
that isn’t a village any more, isn’t
children scurrying over shell mounds,
then are we wraiths of progress, tongues
tangled among tires, chunks of foam,
a shopping cart exposed in low-tide mud?
Are we a burst and launching up—blur 
of wings—snowy egret snowing backwards,
symbol of a harmonious universe. Leaving.
Or: is it other, a world apart and flying
to an undisturbed strand, away from voices,
away from the girl who’s been talking 
all this time—something about a school play—
she’s the dead girl’s ghost haunted 
by the living—and she’s running ahead, 
fury of feet echoing down the path of mud 
and grass skirting the bay—del Estero
and before that Huchion—the girl talking 
all the way to an oak tree, cool dusk 
we rest under before heading back to the car 
in blaring sun, hot asphalt we melt into, black 
ooze that would take us in. Hold us there.