June 20, 2007

This is a poem I wrote last summer. It's about a creek in the forest preserve near my house:

I took a walk through the forest
That fringes on each edge the blue-eyed city
(I say blue because it's summer
And cities like the windy turn doe-eyed
and soft-touched when the air is warm)

I heard a loon begin to call a deep,
throaty bull-frog's howl that Don
called a moose-sound and went on

I saw a mother with her ducks in a row
and a fish out of water; I saw the same
signpost twice in my circle-shaped confusion

I felt the reflection of the sky
the way I imagine Peter's centurion
felt the Holy Ghost, God bless him.

Sandals in the gravel make time-tables
foolish, but thrift a weighty responsibility
for Adam and his grown-up sons
Dean, Dennis, Darvin, Doug

Tell your fruit to wait until you
feel there is time