| |
|
|
|
| |
Like Trees
Planted by Streams of Water
On
this small bluff, lives hang like leaves.
A psalm trickles and surges
in roiling eddies and worried curves.
The Illinois could erode the banks.
All the new and old oaks could tumble
into a templed dam. But roots twist hard
instead beneath the river’s silted
bed.
They fill and feed the farthest leaves
that burn until lives fall to the water
in flames. The colors catch and wither
in human debris. Between a milk carton
and one rented ski, a single, silver fish
breaks the gray-green surface of its
world,
like a tiny god might puncture the sky.—David Wright and his
family live in central Illinois. He
teaches writing and literature at Wheaton
College and is the author of A
Liturgy for Stones (DreamSeeker Books, 2003)
the collection from which this poem
comes.
|
|
|
