DANIEL MCFARLAND   Page 6

ROCKY GAPS

I remember in an old boat
you and I would row along the drifts
      awake and alive,
our speech riddled in unadulterated love
and the greening mountain tips and whites
      and blues of skies
would convalesce into their heights

In through a channel past ponds, to a spanning lake
brought into this majesty and here and there
      running back ashore,
attacked by only the shadows of doting hawks
      skating through rippling mazes and our boat -
there between Appalachia's knolls
those budding ranges rambling down to
      our reflection below

Remember in that channel where murky soot
      laid dormant under diagonal
juts of slate and dirt?
a turtle boxed in spots emerged seeming to explore -
it swam up to a rocky path but walked on
      the grasses and moss,
underpine and broken branches from the spruce
      that overhung

What frailty we found to be broken
      from this sight
by the watchful eye of a hawk floating by -
soaring high, held by the winds
no more aspiring to the beauty
      that surrendered its wings
as we with our feet planted firmly in our boat
floating alone in aimless intercourse with its shadow

 

SCATTERED

i am tired.
we fell from grace
and i follwed
in a headstorm
in a silent cold whimper
for what i did and tried to do
around me fell in
lower seasons pass a gloomed
face today,
winds throw my flakes about
uncovering what was me
 scatter
out gray chapped sky -
left sullen
faded snow drifts
dissipating
into trickling water
run itno glossy stream
run into a drain
freezing over into ice

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