-- “The most common way people give up their power
is by thinking they don’t have any.” –Alice Walker

And so I stand here and call power. 
I stand here and call water. 

I call creeks. Lakes.  
Pools. Sinkholes. 
Tide pools with turban snails 
and starfish—the ones
that have come back to the West Coast,
climbing over rocks on white tube feet, 
resilient, as nature can be resilient. 

I call shinbones of water skinnying down into sluice boxes.
Brackish water, sulfur-smelling water, sludge.
Rain in rain barrels,
clear water spilling over dams
and clear water that has never been dammed. 

I confront the brink
even though I’m part of the brink. 

I call snow geese sifting onto the rice fields, honking. 
White-fronted geese. Brant. 

I call the shapes of leaves: spatulate, cordate, pinnate, lanceolate.

I call the hole in the ozone. 
Pollen. Luciferin. Chitin. 

I call rare plants and animals coming back because of the fire:
fishers, black-backed woodpeckers, globe mallows, morels.

I call fire. 

And fire answers with its flaming mouth and strange whining pronunciation
as it clears the underbrush

and the hole in the ozone answers that it is closing 

and the leaves answer a twelve-year-old boy planted a million trees

And luciferin blinks on and off 
and illuminates what has been buried so long under tons of dark water

and pollen blows into the faces of climbers
who hung all night in slings from the St. John’s Bridge
to stop Shell drilling the Arctic 

and water answers
Belize banned offshore oil
and protected the second largest barrier reef in the ocean 

and my power answers
I’ve always known my hand could have been a leaf:
Hemoglobin and chlorophyll almost the same. 
Only one atom different.