DAVIS COUNTY CAUSEWAY

By Joel Long


Photography: VisitUtah.com

I try to stop stopping, to drive through, thinking, catch morning’s gold hour on Russian olives, the east side of the island, but always something on the causeway startles me. Pink light on clustered clouds drifts in blue above Frary Peak.  First sun hits hills, tarnishes the island brass. Everything doubles — clouds, peak — inverts in still water, glazing shallows of the Great Salt Lake. It is pure reflection, a color bell. Vapor of 40 phalaropes doubles too, spins sideways 3 feet above water, turns, catches sun on every belly and chevron wing, turns. I am caught between where everything happens. A coyote trots the sand bar, salmon on pewter. Avocets part to make room. Gulls stitch glass slivers in the air, their call. I stop.

Joel Long’s book “Winged Insects” won the White Pine Press poetry prize. His collections and chapbooks include “Lessons in Disappearance” and “Knowing Time by Light,” “Chopin’s Preludes” and “Saffron Beneath Every Frost.” His poems and essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Sports Literate, Prairie Schooner, Bellingham Review and Water-Stone Review, among others. He lives in Salt Lake City.