Libra's Way
Swingset chains ring
like tiny bells in the storm. They attempt to flee each other as
winter crosses the freezing black lake.
In the steel gray space
we twist and shake the sand that lashes our shoes together,
blasts our long cold rows of tracks and
all the words we ever made.
Water stays near the water.
It thrashes and writhesagainst its own wet time, strains
repeatedly to become one with
the land and the cold-born clouds
now burning.
We carry winter solace
to that cold shore,to the high blown sand
and snow that shoves us down
like clumsy metal dancers,
like spinning drunks who think
they can do anything
in their own young tilted way.
Now mercy, we know,
is the roots of tall beach grass,
the strength of cottonwoods,
the hard black locust tree full
of long black thorns made
to resist all erosions that
shiver and drift us closed
across our own white blinding.
Still, silver water stretches hard
to enter our land, howls softly
as she crawls up the broad
flat gleaming beach to join us.
She offers smooth glass fingers
from her icy wet hands
each time she comes
but never takes her eyes away
as she soaks back down
the wet gleaming shore.
You can tell she dreams
of young mothers and friends,of children and sleep, of climbing
out of her scratchy wet portrait
and all its icy frame to enter a tall
handsome coast vast and gray,
of being with wild grasses who tug
at the snow and lean close together
in family clumps to hear
the beating of roots and
gull's wings and winters
passing by.
