# Data is Beautiful

With one might tug and push, conservancy engineers
in North New Mexico
open water gates--snow melt,
brimming northern lakes, and streams
gush, lunge, and hurl down Río Abajo to community fields,
fill the dry ditches and canals, clashing
like great banging orchestra cymbals
against dirt.

Plants, bushes, weeds
uncurl, furl out along my ditch,
ants float on islands of leaves,
past pyramids of beer cans,
tadpoles fuse to the water
in swirls of brown mist,
catfish fin beneath driftwood
and stew the water dark brown.

All things pull and strain. The ditch swells
into a great marketplace, where death and life
are exchanged.

A pair of light blue-gray doves skim water surface,
geese veer down, royal couriers
flap-landing in gusty sprinkles, then
serenely floating like white flags of peace,
drifting in pairs, through glare and shadows,
as crawdads, spiders, snakes and frogs
peer from mud and weed corners.

From each unfolding lilac leaf
a blue-green arctic haze glimmers,
from feathers dark winter melts,
from eyes glide out cold deeps,
everything bears a new light.

The crane is breaking ice with its call,
long-legged spider skitters
to birth-thawing rhythms of the shore,
as spring finally arrives,
glistening the dead-slag of winter
in all creatures,
as they emit that special light
they do.