Opportune

A roadrunner, camera shy, sneaks off into the underbrush just as I spy it. Except that one day when I was out with my camera photographing the various outcropping of rocks, the winding trails and curves of land, weird arrangement of broken grass or trash left in the undeveloped area above our housing development. This was before the hundred homes erected over the last few years. The place where this occurred, not bulldozed yet.

I was snapping shots in one direction, turned around, and there was that roadrunner standing quite near on a rise. I slowly raised my camera—digital—took one photo and another as the bird turned one way and stopped still, hearing the clicks, yet not connecting them to me. It took a step one way, pivoted, confused. I continued taking pictures until it gave up—outwitted, probably by the configuration of stones all around, ricocheting sound—and performed its usual disappearing trick.

by Lavina Blossom 

Lavina is primarily a poet and painter, living in Riverside, California.