“Walk forwards and backwards with me.”
— Kenneth Koch
Gazing into Wet
Creek’s tapestry, through
the warp and weft of
minnows weaving
in shafts of sunlight, echoed
in the shadows of
the sawgrass swaying,
in the small stream’s undulance
toward the river
torquing to the Ohio
that somehow will spill
into the Atlantic,
all salt spray hissing
against rocks: the sound of
repeatable longing.
That’s there. And here a
cardinal calls Pretty
pretty pretty from
the pin oak, here a
woodpecker strikes its match-
head against old elm
bark, here the creek widens and
narrows. Dear, the stents in
your heart wend the same;
the plate and screws in my knees
tell me before the skies do
how there’ll be rain, drops
canting crazily,
pocking the creek. The bodies
we have are also bodies
of water, bodies of dust, bodies
that change like clouds, bodies
that will fill, and fail,
and fall. That’s later. Now as we thread
our way through cattails
in gauzy light, there’s this
pause, an inrush of breath, holding
it, holding your hand
watching the water, the way
it flows, feeling my body moving
toward yours, as the water reflects us
as we were then, in its
mottled plane, mirror,
mirror, our younger
faces gazing back
at us from their side
of this day, as we work our
way, through cattails, through
muscadine, weaving through scything
sawgrass, sumac, taking the path
of least resistance.
A Walk Through the Memory Palace 