The Only Water
inspired by my photograph, "River"

First ice covers the shallow no-name creek,
just a thin skim closing the surface,
bubbles caught in the flow beneath,
whorls and cracks everywhere in broken,
riverine curves, micro and macro as ever
so much the same that without thought I
rise from my crouch in the crunchy weeds
to gaze at clouds passing rapidly
over the ridge in their rippled waves
while letting my heart descend into the silt,
where turtles and frogs lie biding their time
in the only water they will ever know.





This Old Man


This old man with the squinched-up face
is at the wheel of his first car.  That’s why
he smiles so oddly in the dayroom
till he flinches at a hand on his arm 
as if from a spatter of grease.  He doesn’t
want the blanket tucked tighter over
his knees.  What he needs is both darker
and larger than this long-coming night.
That’s the problem.  Ask him why he smiles
and it vanishes, dust in the sun.  Buzz
of fluorescents.  Something electronic
cheeping almost softly enough to ignore.
He’s not someone’s father or even anyone’s
lost son now.  Just the old guy in the corner,
even he knows that.  But it was a Mustang.
Blue.  Only six hundred miles and still
smelled brand new when he climbed in.



​

Field Trip


The docent is asking the fourth graders
what part of the landscape painting
they like best, and how many bears
can they find in it.  I’m watching 
the three girls in the back staring
at a nude, pointing and giggling.




No Lamp Can Banish:  Four A.M.


The bleakest hour to awaken,
still groggy from a journey
only half-remembered, but
feeling its slippery warmth
leaving like water from a tub.
Nothing to do now but count
the streetlights visible from
my bed, pretending they’re 
stars, as I suppose they are.
I could reach for an old book
to read, if the pages were
not so gray at this hour,
the kind of murk no lamp
can banish.  Music now would
be too painful, like the dead
watching loved ones dance.
That leaves a drink of water,
cold as eternity from its tap,
and perhaps a couple crackers
to eat till drowsiness returns.
Failing that, pull out my pen
and once again begin telling
the future all I know of the past.





“Passing from Winter to Winter Again”
-—Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People

This is no legendary mead-hall
and I am no lord amid his thanes
and eldermen, but my office 
in early January before classes
resume, and I am alone, shoving 
folder after folder of old memos
and examinations into the trash,
which is still a cleansing rite
like lifting a mug in firelight
and singing the ancient songs— 

when out of nowhere a sparrow 
flits right past my ears, and goes
all dithery against the window,
perching on a curtain cord 
an instant, then fluttering again
against the winter window.
I think maybe the painters 
down the hall opened a door 
to let some fumes out, and now
this poor creature has lost its way.

It takes me fifteen minutes
to get the bird out again, waving 
my hands to frighten it from
my office, then down the hall,
with many loops back and forth,
opening and closing doors,
turning lights on and off
to guide it at last to open air.

Finally I manage it, and head
home feeling like a lord indeed,
like I’ve done more than a day’s 
work, maybe a lifetime’s, so
bright and brief, but of course
I have nothing but this tale
to show for it—and I confess
I changed the actual chickadee
into a sparrow so that it could
fly through history into my
tiny office and out again.