Powerless

The visitors intend only to welcome the sunrise with drumming and yoiking from the rock outcropping where Canyon Creek merely seeps.

Poor Jainey flushes a grasshopper sparrow from her nest in the brush underfoot. Regrets sough across the prairie.

The entrance to the nest she leaves behind is woven of green grass, unlike the tufted July grasses around it; like a delicate basket made with loving native hands, two tawny eggs rest inside--and now the tender is gone.