for Ralph Angel
 
If I allow myself this moment in the fog—
Something flaps. There is a squawk. Something shimmies
in the quiet mouth of the river
and then everything begins to shake. Such restlessness
in water and I cannot help but ripple
out of my place.
 
And it begins again, only louder—
feet dancing underwater, some are so close to speaking
in tongues, that they lift into immediate air
but splash back down.
The snowy egret tolerates it all from his solitary hunt at the shore.
He is focused on more plastic trash
 
than I ever thought was made;
this crowd of Sufi gulls manic trancing another
hour of his day—an impossible distraction
from the real business of fish.
And here am I in my quiet trade
of walking.  I thought I knew what air meant
bristling my quills, but I do not
possess such an anatomy, I do not profess
this tongue to be an instrument.

I am here, not even a ghost in fog,
yet somehow the hour has gotten very late.

Frogpond