—for Poetess Kalamu Chaché, East Palo Alto Poet Laureate

On Puichon land, between open water

and shoreline, the tidal marshes are coming

back—by every measure a miracle

since time and settler had reworked it

into a brownfield, a dump site where things go

for burning. What breathes now, between marsh

and mudflat, are forage and shelter—

saltbush, gumplant, shimmery saltgrass.

On any map, you can hardly see

what the red lines had done to us, what had been

buried in concrete now lies with the wetlands.

The salt marsh harvest mouse, button-eyed

and a little bigger than my thumb,

is a mischief in a patch of pickleweed.