Poetry by Jess Morton

Montezuma Quail

From the brush downhill

her feral eyes

touched one rock

on the edge of our stubborn

rugged road

it, rising up short legged

with his head a scalloped startle

while our car skids, stops

and us out scrambling

as the bird becomes

scrub, stone, down slope

saying not now

only those eyes again, briefly

turned away, then gone