The path of most insistence Constrains the creek Where it spools And rummages through Its darkest secrets And the mooncolored trout revolve. If it's been a long time coming It'll be a long time gone. Or so I think, watching it Neither hurry nor tarry Through spills and basins I used to climb among With a fly rod between my teeth, And may again If life is long. Now I'm content to idle The truck on the bridge As the pines offer Their shadows to water. I can still remember A few things. The years I wasted fishing Down here. Cold rock under fingertips And the smell of willow early. The lapidary green Of the little snake Who swims like water in water. The sun getting hotter On my shoulders, My feet in the current Going numb. Once I stood on the canyon rim And hurled boulders One after another down, To boom and ricochet, To make the shadows speak. There was no one anywhere To hear the canyon's utterance Or how the quiet rushed back hard When I stopped, My loneliness complete, The smell of gunpowder In the air. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE WHEEL OF BEING II by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE MEASURE OF THE YEAR by JAMES GALVIN BEAUTY THAT IS NEVER OLD by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON LA RONDE DU DIABLE by AMY LOWELL SORROWING LOVE by KATHERINE MANSFIELD |