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Upon Reflection

Last I was here it was summer
And where this cottonwood leans
Above the stream, its shadow
Was deep as the warm clear water,
Spilling its light yet languorous
And luminous as the fingerlings
Skimming among stones and silt,
All suspended in rainbow riffles
And warps, wavering reflections
Swimming in tarnished silver,
An old mirror where perceptions
Shift as you look and look away
And back again from the familiar
To a sun-struck shimmering.

But now, for a long moment,
There is my own reflection -
How once I would have reached
To low over-hanging branches
And swung up and out and into
The water, feeling not a falling
But a floating carrying-away.
A drifting leaving and arriving.
And now, in the cold and ice,
The tree's deep shadow is still,
Leaning farther and rooted solid
Beneath wind and snow-spumes,
And now I climb out, let myself
Go, across the frozen stream.

Poetry by countryfog
Read 405 times
Written on 2010-12-08 at 14:54