The purring creek
suns itself
under lacy flounce
while crimson, furtive
prowls
biding time to pounce.
Tag Archives: creek
Connections: February 2.17
THE CURMUDGEON POET ON GROUNDHOG DAY
I don’t get it
I never will
what’s with this oracular
Punxsutawney Phil?
I can never remember
if it’s shadow or sun
let alone why a groundhog
tells our weather fortune.
Why do people need
a brass band to decide
what I can figure out
by just looking outside?
The creek is cold metal
the wind is a dirge
the slightest green
has yet to emerge
and poets bemoan
Little Cal to Suwannee
how few things rhyme
with Punxsutawney.
Connections: December 8.16
There’s a joke about a river
called Denial
sludged with fear
cunning and wile.
It looks like this
from first inception
thick with the grit
of self-deception.
Nothing funny
about this joke
all it does
is gag and choke.
Vagaries in Gestation: November 28.16
Yesterday I drove to the park and, as always, slowed on the adjacent street, where little wiggly people are unloaded from back seats. A car at the curb had its doors open on the street side, so I stopped and waited.
A man stood at the side of the car, arm outstretched, helping someone out. Not a wiggly little person but a ponderously slow older person. A woman. Bundled warmly against the November day, she held his hand tightly. I caught only a brief glimpse of her but I knew. I knew those blank eyes and that empty face. I knew that slight curl inward. I couldn’t swallow because of the lump in my throat and I couldn’t see because of the tears. It all comes back so quickly.
I walked around the park and so did they. No. They did not walk. She moved her feet in that familiar shuffle, achingly slow, leaning hard on him. His baby steps described patience beyond words. Twice I noticed that they stood in embrace, she apparently clinging to him.
There was a slight wind, causing tears to run down my face. I tasted their salt and was grateful for the release.
Caregiving and dementia change people so I cannot say if he were husband or son, but I think son. I think the husband was at the playground with a little granddaughter, he seeking respite which isn’t because there is no respite from dementia. It is merciless in its constancy and as steely cold as the water in the creek.
I stood over the creek yesterday and thought about the cold water that runs through life and the daunting aloneness of those who stand firm in it.
Connections: November 6.16
Even as the treetops
wane from dull to duller
Nature plies her underbrush
and plays with watercolor.
Connections: November 5.16
Jabbering to itself
the creek pretends it’s the tide
with sunshine and little leaf boats
bouncing along for the ride.
Connections: October 26.16
I think the ducks know
that their grey-green world
is edged in yellow-brown
that summer’s London Bridge
leaf by leaf
is falling down
that their rippled hideaway
will soon be roofed
by bare-boned arbor
so subdued they seem
gliding
soundless
to its shady harbor.
Connections: October 16.16
Here
in the sudden shade
stones that give the water tongue
gossip
quacked by ducks upstream
gurgled
to the trees
that bend
knowingly
to hear.
Connections: September 12.16
Is this question or answer
this placid place
that holds twice
a moment’s face
in vague Rembrandt aspect
a mysterious knowing
do we find it in shadow
or in the glowing?
Connections: September 2.16
There are many ways from here to there
but this is the one that taunts
this, not the peach, is the cat-eyed dare
it’s the log uncrossed that haunts.
With more thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives and a nod to Prufrock.
