Poem: Rock Creek by Naomi Ayala
Rock Creek
All along the path
the trees are tired strangers. 
I see my reflection in the brush.
Young deer climb down
the darkening hills,
the motion bringing
wakefulness to my limbs,
but the deer
are just deer
going to water.
Back along the path,
tiredness, like winter’s call,
returns to me—
what binds me to the world
of human things.
I stretch my arms out from my body,
two moving boughs that disappear
into the dark.
NAOMI AYALA: (Puerto Rico) moved to the United States in her teens, eventually earning an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Writing in both Spanish and English, she is author of the poetry collections Wild Animals on the Moon (1997), chosen by the New York City Public Library as a 1999 Book for the Teen Age, This Side of Early (2008) and Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations 2013. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Boriquén to Diasporican: Puerto Rican Poetry from Aboriginal Times to the New Millennium (2007), Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature (2006), and First Flight: 24 Latino Poets (2006).
Naomi’s latest book, “Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations,” was published in 2013 by Bilingual Review Press.
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