The reeds along the north rim are crushed
Flat from three months of snow and flood.
(Stunned into silence, broke and shocked.
But that’s just me making words. Give them
A month or two, they’ll straighten back up.)
A dark-eyed junco—drab seed-eater—flits
In the wreckage. It loses itself in a soggy clump
Of cattail tufts then pops up in a nearby
Thorn bush, trilling its rotary-phone-ring trill.
I’m wringing this poem from February’s
Damp rag. I want fresh words, but those
Will wait for the warmth to flock, for
Puddles deep in shade to shuck their last
Sheen of ice, for bugs and grubs to bejewel
The dirt, berries to bedeck the bushes.
The junco hops down a stair of jittery,
Brittle stalks to a little runnel of snowmelt.
It has stopped trilling, nothing
Having answered. I watch it drink from
Its reflection, quick sips bringing its face to
A face it can’t name. Drizzle starts
And soon the only sound I hear is water
Arriving at water. The junco’s gone. Wordless,
I turn back to the lake and face myself.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 1.
Prabu Vasan lives in New York State’s Hudson Valley. His work has been published in 6×6, Tarpaulin Sky, Tricycle, and the anthology, I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights. He is working on a first collection of poems titled, To Find One Another.
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