Tuesday, March 14, 2006

I SHALL HAVE POETRY IN MY LIFE


Sightings - Lake Katherine

Sitting on this log, I can’t see

the steep plunge of the falls

but I hear their infinite sound,

filling the gorge with white-water noise.

“Just listen,” I tell myself.


Later on the rumbling bridge,

the water scouring below me,

I think about the lesson I just learned:

"Never go round a bend too quickly

or you will miss the blue heron

rising from the bottom of the falls."


Buzzard shadows glide across trees

fooling me to look up every time.

“Be still and wait.”

What comes is a water thrush, tail

bobbing, searching along the rusted

shores of the little eddy.


How could that dragonfly have

been so slow?

Swallowed whole,

Only glittering pieces of delicate

wing left behind.


“Remember the heron,” I think,

doubling back towards the trailhead.

Silent at the turn, I spot a kingfisher

and watch it,

perched still and forgiving, on a dead,

weathered tree in Lake Kattherine.


March, 2002