undercut banks
Share Article “Beside the rivering waters of, hither and thithering waters of, night.”
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Through the rain drunk meadow
Fat on mountain showers and drowsy
I stitch, in my scissor step, through the long grass
A furrow like a tipsy ploughman
And harvest before my boots
A skittering wake of hoppers blustery
Down to the rocky banks
Under cottonwood shade.
Trout wand in my hand,
A silly baton, slicing the air.
And like a conductor browbeating the woodwinds
I conjure the slipstream.
I come to track this raveling course
And to track the course in me;
To watch the stalking sun crest the canyon wall
And paint the water pewter shimmery.
To wonder too
At the dizzy stones
And mayflies
Clouding the wild roses.
To feel my boy’s old heart thump, still,
When the water piles up
On the sudden shoulders
Of the heavy trout.
To smell the consequence
Of my slippery steps
On the wet and awkward rocks
That bruise the mint and mugwort.
To see silver dimes clinging
To the water-jostled cress -
Glinting coins in the watery sun
That spend well still indeed.
And too there, once,
Gold-spurred columbines
Elegant as shooting stars
On stems impossibly delicate.
To listen to the fluent
Gravel-throated chortling
Of water on rocks
And the dark sluicing soughing
Of wind in the sedge -
Old languages I remember well
Wandering wild within willow banks.
To feel the cold on my wet pilgrim feet,
The chill on my late autumn cheeks
In the weird arctic half-light
As dusk draws down the glen on me
And the stars a sudden swath of sublime.
And to again remember, surely,
That never will I know
The deep watery secrets
In the currents of time
Unplumbed in dark undercut banks.
From Mountain Wizard, by Thomas J. Phalen.
