Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

The Crane Dance

Through the tule fog they call,
deep resonant bugling
that lifts a curtain of mist:
sunlight strikes the marsh.
Across the shallow waters,
their long tapered legs
stride to a grassy expanse.

On this stage the dancers stand,
a symmetry of feathers,
eyes locked and charged,
wishbones quivering desire
through open throats,
their slender necks
extending toward the sky.

 Blue-gray wings in unison
rise, beat once to leap--
the grace of cranes held high
in morning air, rocking down
to bow and call, call and bow,
the countless courting steps
of a thousand generations.

How our distant ancestors
must have lain in wait
on these nuptial plains,
beheld through reeds
this same ballet, learned
an ancient choreography
from masters of the dance.

If Not For the Crows

If not for the crows,
the sky would be empty
today. They command
the air, small squadrons,
familiar silhouettes
against the awful blue.
Black as bombers,
they fly straight
for the fields, become
little politicians in dark suits
walking the stubble,
preening their feathers
to an oily sheen.
They flaunt their wings,
trade guttural caws,
discuss order and chaos
in a land almost silent,
if not for the crows.

              September 12, 2001

The First of Many Fish

Snowmelt slows through a braided creek between the willows
where my daughter walks with me in mountain twilight.

At the edge of graveled shallows, I pause to show her how
I test the line, flex the rod, and cast the silver bait with ease.

In the shadows of the stream, a lidless eye sees what we
cannot-the lure like a mayfly swept in summer's current.

One cold hesitant kiss is all I need to set the steel, and then
I pass the tackle's weight to those eight-year-old hands,

ask her to wind the reel. She is unprepared, suddenly connected
to its struggling, but holds on to land the muscled brook trout.

Stunned alongside that gasping fish, she looks at me in fading
light, and I begin to see a pattern in the waters of her world:

what I have hooked, she will catch. Will she know enough
to separate the bones from flesh? Or will she learn to work

the barbs by feel, unhook the mouth, release a life never meant
to be her own? Even now I want to tell her, let it go. Let it go.

Migrating Blind

Eyes closed, I could find my way in the mist,
low moans guiding more than ships
through the Gate, each horn in its own slow time:
the Bridge, Fort Point, Mile Rock, the Light
at Point Bonita. Sit still while everything
moves. Watch the half moon waning away.
Waves smoothing sand in a headland cove.
Fog invading cool concrete passages
deep in the old gun batteries. Loose flocks
of finches and warblers pouring south.
The single sharp-shinned hawk following
her prey, shooting the gap, scattering
songbirds into cypress trees. Four vultures.
A few dead leaves tumbling gold in the air.
One, alive, a monarch lofting to Monterey.
Close my eyes again. Ravens weaving
the autumn sky. Pine sap evaporating
in sunlight, groves of eucalyptus oils,
the bittersweet scent of sage and chamise
rising five hundred feet to the roadcut
where I wait. Once a year. Instinctively.

Shards

After the collection of broken statues
at the Open Secret Bookstore

In love of all beings
who have been wounded,
yet are truly unaffected
in their divine essence

as if this sign was written
on the wall of our world
by the hand of the one
who built us coil by coil,
then set us down
as living earthenware,
imperfect vessels
for whatever pure thing
we were meant to hold.

Timing is Everything

If a man broke a hundred bones in his body
or burst the arteries in his heart

or severed every bond of love
   all at once

he would face his death
   and quick.

But if he should break them one at a time
over the span of his natural life

who's to say he couldn't limp along?
   Like the rest of us.

William Keener is a writer and environmental lawyer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He graduated from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in 1977. For the past 16 years he has served as an attorney in the Office of Regional Counsel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. His chapbook, Three Crows Yelling: Poems, co-authored with poets Bill Noble and Michael Day, won the 1999 National Looking Glass Award from Pudding House Publications which published the chapbook in 2000. Keener's poems have appeared in various literary reviews, and his essay on a trek to the remote mountains of New Guinea is forthcoming in Adventures in Green Travel (edited by Andrea W. Herrmann).
"The Crane Dance" was first published in Temenos: Journal for Dance & the Arts. "The First of Many Fish" was first published in Jennifer Bosveld (ed.), Fresh Water: Poems from the Rivers, Lakes, and Streams (Pudding House Publications, 2002); "Migrating Blind" in the Marin Poetry Center Anthology (2002); and "Shards" in Studio Potter Magazine (June 1998). "If Not For the Crows" will be published in Beat the Blackened Wing: An Anthology of Crows edited by Matthew W. Schmeer (forthcoming, 2004).