(the following poems are from
Sugar Mule, Issue #32,
www.sugarmule.com)

A Song From Yeats

I went out to the river, hungry at its banks
it pulled hungrily at me, I let it pull.

Rod in hand I cast into the slow seam,
Nymphs, down dropping down,
felt a rock, another rock, then a quick tick.

Fish after fish I gathered there,
by the big tree where the rivers met.

When I let my last fish go, dusk and drakes
were on the wing, descending, descending.

I changed to a dry fly and let it fall.

Silent as the dew it fell, and where
it landed I couldn’t see, but landed all the same

and took another trout beneath the silver moon.

I heard the river all night in my dreamless sleep.
Tangled in its currents I rose at dawn

and slipped back down to its wandering edge.

Constant Gardener

This stupid proud fearless bank
is my bank. Where the fish
are twice as hungry and three times
as big. The bank without a footpath.
The bank on the opposite side
where my eyes are caught like burrs
in the light. Where the rhythm of mayflies
kicks up a scentless song. Where one deer
draws closer, the other pushes farther away.
The feathers of a pheasant lie scattered
in the tall grass. The willows
a twister board of tunnels and tracks.
Coyotes slink away looking over shoulders.

Something has grabbed hold in the center
explodes in momentary display
before disappearing. I am lost, I am not lost.
There-in lie the branches of a downed tree,
now a clear rocky bottom. Water,
constant gardener, line leaning against
the doorjamb of the sky: a sure thing,
a slow trespass, a sudden take, traveling down
the next bend of distance. The car is packed
and the old house is empty. The dog waits,
peering out the window. We’ll spend all day
driving and fishing our way back to the other side
of the mountains. Shaped, reshaped,
hesitant. Caught in this great labyrinth of time.

My Sindhu

When I was young I started at the shallow tributaries
and worked my way painfully to understanding.
Now at the edge of the sea, a trillion tons of water
follow the moon. I tried reason, I wanted to stop
after I began. Some days on the river I take rocks
and bring them home, line my shelves and dresser,
balance my toothbrush on one, clamp my vice onto another.

One day I believe the language of sparrows that skim
above the water which somehow mirror trout in their feeding.
It is ridiculous, this understanding, like the path of the Indus
and all other great rivers that flow over large distances.
It is like remembering all of my lovers at once.
The lovers I left for the trout I cannot stop fishing for.
The lovers who broke me because words are not a bridge.

Where is my river then, the one always out of reach,
the one I dream about. I want the easiest path,
but there are none. The end that holds the crescent
of your face—perfect simulacrum of my ideology.

(note: In the Upanishads, the Indus river is called the Sindhu. It originates in Tibet
and runs almost 2000 miles along the length
of Pakistan.)

Hardy Faintly Singing

River much missed, how you pull at me,
saying now you are not as you were.

When you had changed from the one that was all to me,
standing as I first did on the bridge, peering down

you never promised you’d wait for me,
and I have never been back, just in memory.

I miss things that meant nothing to me,
pushing all day through current and willow,

returning after dusk, in the dark, to the van.