Bosque del Apache

By Ryland Li | He/Him/His | Arlington, Virginia

after flying
seventeen hundred miles
I pay my respects
to the world-honored ones
in the withered moor

Thousands of sandhill cranes blanket the marsh in gray.

Seeing and hearing them in these vast numbers I cannot help but feel awe. And pride for the tapestry of life of which I am a thread. 

These beings are no lower than me. Indeed, they are higher in many ways. Wiser. They know this river forest, not by Google Lens or guidebooks, but in flesh and bone: where to drink, what to eat, how to sleep. More beautiful. Their red crowns stark against their grey plumage, their graceful flight and playful dances. And their voices that resound into the sunset as though of a single piece with earth and sky. And this most of all: that to survive, even thrive, they do not lay waste to their home.

and now the weariness
of this world
slips away
into the darkling night
the calls of a thousand cranes

*This piece was first published in Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal.