The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Michael Lauchlan
Written In Water
On a cool March night I follow the railroad reciting what Keats I’ve retained A plane crosses low parts a quiet that laps back in Darkness rises from underbrush falls from slate clouds The faint warmth of day slinks away Something about bees about ripeness “more and still more” Traffic drones— rises ebbs Another plane descends toward lights They must be stacked up burning fuel waiting their turn I pause on the viaduct as a stout man pushes a cart underneath He’s reaped his share of empties and walked ten miles in a day’s slow circuit but cops pass too often for him to rest here tonight Bats wheel above beeping through the chill. Interval
A bloom, after all—the algae shimmers with green midday luminescence. A man and a boy and a girl sit at a dock’s end ensconced in rarest silence, fishing for whatever will nibble. Though it’s fall, they wear shorts and flip-flops. The still air feels like a breath wafting west from a steel mill in Detroit. I rest my bike against a tree and stroll past geese who sneer and hiss. Today, no heron waits in shallows opposite, his storm- blue neck slowly turning. No breeze stirs the lake’s bright surface as a whiff of something fetid rises in the heat and three figures quicken a quiet dock and a dad helps a small girl slip a worm onto a hook. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |