Compute the area of a marsh using Heron's Formula

PROGRAM     Snowshoe hares with wide-set eyes
IMPLICIT       a man shouting at a screen
                       ads appearing, women
                         in a bus terminal making
                         eyes at the camera (*profile*)


REAL  sea cucumbers with spines like cacti, like urchins
REAL  saltwater aquariums in the sand traps of a mini-golf
            course; marine worms ciliating out of substrate,
             the substrate, a turtle carapace
REAL              “a = newspaper embers”, ! over marsh area
(IL)LOGICAL             “b = swallowed into the night”, ! night as a
                                                                            bullfrog


READ a, b, c
             “c = orange peel masks, thumbs pushed through the eyes”


WRITE            conditional argument, three sides of a wood AND
WRITE            rooted perimeter, anti-gravity hand gestures AND
WRITE            logic “ERROR: this is not a triangle, it is a marsh!” THEN


IF         Earth is moving so quickly, why can’t we feel it?
            answer = (ashes + amphibians + ambergris)
             divided by half, celestial unit conversion OR
ELSE   conditions of moving water, how wave frequency =
             sound but also energy but again, somehow,
             the moon
END IF           write error, errant heron, terror dreams
END PROGRAM

put your seatbelt on, no smoking, and be civil

on the last day, i saw a boy on the bank of the Labrador Sea

his shirt held a hole for every latitude,
      56 slug bites through the veins of 56 tea leaves

his eyes brightened at my notice
      the raising hackles of ravens
his hair floated in with the tide, soft and black
      a field of submerged rushes in the darkwater of the Nain harbour

he mouthed his name close and cold
      ice pans colliding, plane engine through ear plugs

how about now? he spoke, seeing my confusion, knowing
i had new ears for ice
      orchestra of sea stacks rising
      urgency of the last caribou swallowing me
his open palm, a question, who will let me stay?

i watched his tiny adam’s apple
      snowshoe hare, its tracks undulating in swallow
      lichens germinating beneath his fingernails
his skin, unbroken earth
      community of hunters
      permafrost
he is here now, at the base of Mt. Sophie
      reflection of the Torngats in his mother’s eyes
      soapstone quarry
      bent over souls standing in shadows of bent over firs
      arctic char clouding the water in escape of bearded seals

i held the boy and a rubble of crow berries in my hand
i, hypnotized by the forest medicine of old ways
i, still, stood clutching diamonds of chain-link, my feet slipping
      trilobites returning tarmac to quuniq

entering the aircraft, i palmed every window
i looked for the boy from my seat
      a wolf and her pups, crescent-eyed and gone

Writer and biologist S.A. Leger, originating from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, lives with her wife and dachshund in Newfoundland, Canada. She is an information designer by day and an ornithologist most other times. Her poems have most recently appeared in Storm Cellar, Dunes Review, the tiny, Junto Magazine, Mantra Review, and Kestrel, among others.

Published April 4 2022