Poem: Elk

I always had trouble with nature poems, but here's an attempt. I may write about this beautiful weekend in a post later on.
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Elk

What do you know of elk?
I know nothing

so I set out in exploration,
coaxing the car over paved mountains
through San Francisco's towers and drab

past the panhandlers and the man
selling roses over the bridge.

The sun blooms in Marin
and the GPS satellites
surprise me with back roads,
with the splotch and run
of cows to the nearest stream
and horses whose noses touch the ground.
I slow so the vultures
can take one last bite of carrion
before embracing the wind and alighting.

Driving to the elk reserve at Point Reyes
I discover a shimmer of ocean to my left
in anticipation of a whale migration,
and I look for seagulls
when we find Bird Rock deserted.
At the end of the trail
on cliffs overlooking blues,
crags scatter with mussels;
it was lunchtime for us too

and as the flour of the baguette
paints our faces in a way
that makes sunscreen jealous,
bread and cheese and water
never tasted so intimate,
seasoned with the smell of ocean
and the roll and suction of the incoming tide.

After lunch, lost in a potpourri
of shoulder-length yellows, pinks, oranges,
we imagine ourselves stars of a movie
running home through fields of flowers.
Then lost again in the overgrowth of bushes
navigating the trail by a blush of dirt.

Imagine my surprise as I spot
their gaze, their odd cotton tails, the statuesque
pose that breaks into a leap across the lake,
and then two, and five, and fifteen
casting water and light into shapes and motes,
over ducks nonplussed by this procession.

They reach the top of the bluff before we do
silhouetted against a sky so bright I squint,
wreathed in poppies.