Listening Post Poem by Taylor Graham

Between a mossy outcrop
and a bedrock mortar.
I watch a neighbor’s wood-smoke rise
toward the contrail
of a transcontinental flight.

Two overwintered bluebirds
peck berries from the mistletoe of a dying oak
whose roots dig into frost-heave,
decomposing granite re-composing
tree and shadow.

Atop a boulder, a squirrel has eaten
half a mushroom-cap and left the rest.
Coyote scat is full of manzanita berries
and fur, fragments of bone: what’s
left of gray squirrel.

I imagine I could hear the earth turn
its worms through soil, or maybe
that’s blood running rabbit-trails
in my ears, or else
news on the breeze

from ridges up-east and over.
I stand listening, till it’s time
to go back home.
Can I find a space there
to store this quiet?