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Flush
Now twilight is beginning to sink
into the thicket of trees and vines,
and the pasture grass softens
from green to brown in its glide
up from the brackish creek.
Cool, warm, open black,
it's all there, framed in shadow
like a small painting, once hopefully made,
left now to hang on a doorless wall.
A covey of bobwhite quail
bluster up from the tall grass along the creek bed.
A cloud of white, brown, black,
a trace of blue on their leonine necks,
they hover for a noisy second,
then together thread into the woods.
Here, now gone, their flown arc lingers,
vanishes somewhere between me and the dark.
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