Sunset approaches.
My little boat tugs at the anchor line,
confused.
A steady wind pushes one way,
the flow and the distant tide, another.
The boat trembles and rocks,
finding no easy accord.
I don't take sides, and sit in silence.
A beaver swims from shore.
Nearing the boat it elects caution,
and quietly slips beneath the green water.
I watch the smooth, polished ripples that remain
...and slowly sink back into it, the reverie.
Traffic sends white noise from a distant levee road.
The cosmic angles and geometries of illumination slowly decline,
bright, tenuous lines etched in the space around me.
Ah!
The beaver returns,
only to vanish into a dark, brambled bank.
On the shore, those trees still with sun
acquire a patina of dull gold,
and those now without
begin the slow transmutation into lead;
This pastime of mine, I now see
has put me at the center of thing.
Yet watching the sun glow red
and sink into the dark line of trees,
I see upriver, downriver,
not one other has come out
to witness or celebrate
the end of day.
Perhaps it is too peaceful an act, I muse,
while the waves and wind
weave a mesh of the orange sky.
