Estuary Poem
First,
a lake opened, then another lake
of light, then a pond of dark,
where the lark hid its beak
in a needle of wind.
In another place,
shaded by hunched elms,
meticulous ferns and weeds
have nothing to hide,
but the tadpoles drifting
on the black tide.
Under the water lintel of a ripple,
where all of the childhood’s stones
had fallen for years, trouts and carp
appeared, doing nothing,
freed
from the yoke of the current,
engraved
in the stillness of abandon,
summoned
to the spell of silence.
As in a place
where the landscape ends,
the whole sky matched the emptiness.
I pressed my ear against a dead tree vein:
I heard
the hiss of bones burnt by breath
aching,
purified,
the earth’s
grief forever lodged in my ribs.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 