For the Descendants

Interspersed tangle of treetop twig windings
a subtle fur of nest trestled, bursting
bounds. Burgeoning weight of straws
& strands. A limbic system achieving
linkages that hold, hold firm, through night,
through poundings of weather. Let chicks age
on into an elegance past croaking. Seawind
carries sounds we have to pick through
smelling around salt for the whale's back,
for the jellyfish school, for the driftwood
that looms a traffic of forest in the blue.
That otters shake off the aquatic as we
step down the gnarled, uneven path to another mind
is as easy to forget as dammed beavers.
Tails patchwork quilts of dabbing. Thatching a will,
preservations beyond death's modern grapples,
descendants hear the dance of joy. Rightings of folly.
Laughter in the prairie air.