Ars Poetica
The broad-tailed hummingbird
has a black throat patch that looks
red to you in mountain light.
She’s pond’s length away and songlessly
building a nest to accommodate
growing young.
This is not the life for you
to experience being a mother.
So you put your body on the line
in other ways. You align yourself
with the night heron who stalks the quiet
backwaters in the predatory dusk.
Here in the ecstatic silence
is a shadow you can’t identify. Press
your ear against its whirring heart.
Brynn Saito is the author of two chapbooks and three collections of poetry including, most recently, Under a Future Sky (Red Hen Press, 2023). She co-edited with Brandon Shimoda The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (Haymarket Books, 2025). Brynn’s the recipient of the Benjamin Saltman Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, VOGUE, and American Poetry Review. Brynn teaches in the Creative Writing MFA program at Fresno State, located on Yokuts and Mono lands.