The Little Bat Trainer

Gwen Ebert's poems register the impact of the desert, and the freedoms it unleashes, on tradition and the desire for rootedness. She scours the landscape for signs, and is met with the innocent wildness of animals: "... see the kestril, // the sparrow hawk, a quick swoop of shadow. / If we could, we would cross ourselves like that, // like something unexpected: / cloud burst, dust devil, flock of cranes." Through her incantations, self and world merge as she strives to embrace both the confining past and the limitless future.