Reading the Water
__________________________________________

It’s enough to know where you are
when the river narrows and spreads,
coils and stretches into an evening
that sprinkles scotch into the green shadows
of reeds and trees.

There is a turn that tunnels into dark all day
where an oak pendulum rows
a long rhythmic sentence,
and there are straits flecked with boulders,
a constellation of moons
holding their faces to the light.

Even if you don’t know where you are
you follow water that knows its course,
whether you wriggle awake from a nightmare
or stare into the thin mortality of the mirror.

In the dark pocket under the boulder,
behind the long fingers of ripples
reaching from nests of branches,
an old trout keeps time,
evening slides down the trunks
and memory is a wavering shape
in the weeds and long strands of grass.

The air buzzes and spits specks of fire.
The river pulls every possibility downstream.