The reflections of coniferous trees
patterning & unpatterning themselves
Like consummate intermediaries
caught in the pastiche
Of something other. The highway hums
Its mournful tunes. TV towers buzz & blink red eyes
And the river—
blinks back.
A man on the radio
says nature is getting smarter—has learned
to fashion itself differently. Things have changed, he says.
The world just warming up.
But you wouldn’t know it here
Watching the child with his fishnet approaching
A flat-lit pool of baby ducks
for a second time
As if the mother won’t turn & look at the child
as something more or less
like a child with a fishnet
As if, perhaps, this time they won’t circle
just out of reach.