APRIL 4, 1969

It may be possible
upon reflection
after a wet spring,

mottled sun beneath
the canopy of sycamores
standing, frozen still

upon black water.
The sloshing sound
of my wet feet

not ready to walk
to Canada,
leave the creek

and family behind,
become outlaw
in their mind.

It may be possible
to fill those channels
again, rain until

the road flows by.
And when the earth
is full, excess standing,

I may look down
upon heaven’s clouds
with no direction.

After the odyssey in Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain” and Leonard Durso’s poem “a thousand years ago on some coastline in the fall.”