Because the pines that climb the banks
achieve today this exact tapered height,
and the November sky cleared overnight,
I stand outside instead of in, stunned
by shafts of slanted light, mid-woods,
and over the river, fifty-foot
parallelograms drifted with rising mist.
Now and then such friendly intersections
of law and human love, lucky effects
of the light, I think to myself,
tilting the bill of my cap to block
the bright circle rising in
the southern quadrant. Transparent
leaves angle across my vision,
and I’m here for the heron, who lifts
after dipping for fish beyond the cattails,
herky-jerky legs and misted wings dangling,
all ungainly until beak, head, and neck
align like an arrow, feathered and aimed
upstream at the sun’s risen disc.

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F.W. "Skip" Renker's poems have appeared in many small press and online magazines (most recently, Triplopia, Poetry Superhighway, and Temenos), as well as several anthologies. He's a Pushcart Prize nominee who has published two chapbooks, Birds of Passage (Delta Press), and Sifting the Visible (Mayapple Press). He teaches English and meditation classes at Delta College in Michigan's Saginaw Valley.
E-mail: fwrenker at delta dot edu
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kaleidowhirl  |  spring 2007