Spring 2011, Volume 10

Poetry by Yvonne Leach

Pelicans Appear

The three of us walk
the secluded beach in Manzanilla,
breaking our U.S. routines
of coffee and work and dinner and email and TV
for this trusting blue sky
that just last night held millions of stars
whose constellations
we guessed at from the rooftop;
clinking margaritas,
the smell of lime in the air,
this crashing ocean is so loud
we have to shout to hear one another,
and then mid-sentence we grow quiet
as a group of pelicans appear,
riding the top of the long waves,
wings beating a slow rhythm,
the air their highway, their trail,
as they rise slightly, then dip, their bellies
barely above the crest. They pass without
acknowledging us, as they should,
in their business of flying, and yet for us,
they are all we know in this moment.

 

 

BIO: Yvonne Higgins Leach received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Washington State University in 1983 and a Master of Fine Arts from Eastern Washington University in 1986. Her work has appeared in South Dakota Review, South Carolina Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Poem, 333Hiram Review, Phantasmagoria, West Wind Review, Willow Review, Arnazella, Owen Wister Review, Phoebe, Evansville Review, Griffin, Soundings East, Quercus Review, Westview, Distillery, Eureka Literary Magazine, Arnazella, and Pearl, among others.