from As a
Heron Unsettles a Quiet Pool
Tim
McNulty:
Little
River Love Poem
The early summer light
steps birdlike
down the east slope of
and stirs low mists along the
river
into flight.
Back inside, you lie
still asleep in your summer
skin.
A blue sheet thrown back like
a dress,
your dark hair
spilled rain over your shoulders.
Having so much and nothing
at all
to say,
I slip cold arms around
you.
You turn, sleepily,
and a deep green river
drifts away in your waking eyes.
From a wooden skiff
tied to a salmonberry bush,
you step ashore,
holding in your arms
everything I ever let slip away.
************
Morning
of Birds
You said "Look. .
."
Past the door, four swans
were breasting the still
morning mist.
Frost along the sedge
and lake-edge grasses,
the thinnest
lens of ice.
And atop a leaning spruce
an eagle, glowing faintly
in the early light.
The swans utter soft
muted calls
almost like the calls of geese:
whistlers.
While out from the
shadowed reeds,
two, and three more
--one
the darker gray of the young--
echoing back
the deep wintry call.
It is before the first
sun.
Wood ducks feed in the marshgrass,
small ripples
move soundlessly out
over luminescent water.
".
. . a morning of birds."
Your words,
and the day loosening itself
out of the intricate blossoms
of frost.