Sweetwater Swamp

I had read in the newspaper
that the Audubon Society
planned a tour at Sweetwater Swamp--
or whatever it is called--
but I forgot.

Mari said she was going to a sewing class,
and I said that I thought I would celebrate Spring
by checking out the bird population at the Swamp.

I am trying desperately to remember what the real name is.
The City or the County or Someone pretends to do magic tricks
with sewage water, pouring it into pits and ponds where
the reeds grow like weeds, and the ponds become pits.
It is a grand place for birds and turtles and birders and reeds.
The surplus water--if that is what it still is--is released into the riverbed
where it surges like a tiny, tired tidal bore going north
where the river once ran untended, but that was hundreds of years ago
before the Spanish came, and the cowboys and cattle came,
when the river ducked down to the water table, seeking kin.

The turtles are sociable folk,
clambering up onto the sagging edges of the reeds, clamering
about Spring and how glad they are not to be in snow, convincing themselves and each other never to buy another snow shovel.
I believe them.

They make lame jokes about climate change.

Someone brought a Harris' Hawk for show, whose history of injury and repair
I could not catch,
and up the walk, a biologist
with a Gila Monster explained
why Gila Monsters sometimes ate only three times a year,
during bad years when pack rats were scarce,
and I nodded understanding, thinking
I'd do that, too, even in a good year.

Wetlands, I said to myself:
it is called Sweetwater Wetlands.

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