Water Dog
 

My dog stands joint deep
in a shallow stream;
her greedy engine tongue
dips, curls, flips, and laps
an ocean down her gullet.
Beneath her dripping chest
more water rambles by
in search of dragonflies or deer,
chortling toward ponds and rivers,
and on, assured the sun
will lift it from the Atlantic,
drop it back on Bromley Mountain
to tumble down that ravaged face
of rivulets and gullies
to where my dog will stand
still gulping,
if not this season then the next.

previously published in Riptide

 

Water Bugs
 

pen spirals
across the fabric of the stream,
strange encryptions,
like Arabic
inked against a flowing scroll,
or Chinese brushstrokes
drawn on silk,
or poems etched on panes
of silver-coated glass
that tremble in the breeze
to shake loose
what’s just been written
by nibs invisible
until one stops,
a black-brown lacquered
period of a sentence
come to rest against a floating leaf.
 
If everything is strings
vibrating,
perhaps these threads
of curlicue
inscribe a symphony
or its fragments.
But how to read them
quickly traced and disappearing
like ancient chants
of vanished monks
dispersed in incense to the sky?

And if that trout
suspended
speckled brown, red, and green
could sing,
what music would it scan
reversed upon my face
unfurled
against the passing clouds,
what measures
set aglow
inside the slowly moving
sun?

previously published in Riptide