Creek-song
It begins in a cow lane with bees
and white clover, courses along corn,
picks up tempo against rocks.
It rises to a teetering pitch as I
cross a shaky tree-bridge, syncopates
a riff over the dissonance of trash—derelict
ice box with a missing door, mohair
loveseat sinking into thistle. It winds
through green adder's mouth, faint
as the bells of Holsteins turning home.
Blue shadows lengthen, but the undertow
of a harmony pulls me on through
raspy Joe-pye-weed and staccato-barbed fence.
The creek hums in a culvert beneath cars,
then empties into a river that flows
oboe-deep past Indian dance ground,
waterwheel and town, past the bleached
stones in the churchyard, past the darkening hill.
