I park my Soul under a live oak tree
outside of Walmart
trying to find cover
from the kind of Florida sun
that can bake the paint off a car.
Just out of the shadow
of my parking-lot arbor,
I notice her,
frail legs bent
at acorn-knob elbows, toes
splayed like tiny pontoons
on a lake of hot pavement.
This delicate waif is
stranded between a fat-tired pickup
and a paint-speckled contractor’s van.
I want to sweep her into my arms,
and carry her back to her ranch
where she can pick at bugs in cool grass
and shade herself in her own arbor of cows.
She pauses her bobbing walk,
cocks her head, fans her feather mohawk,
and regards me with a gold-ringed eye,
as if to say I’ve seen your kind,
and I’m not impressed,
because I may be small,
but I can fly.

© by Randi Lynn Sanders.
Used with the author’s permission.