Upper Shoals, Glendale, SC
4/29/24
A school of polliwogs scatters at my footfall. fry
peck at algae, shimmer when their scales catch light.
Each rivulet sounds out its own moody articulation
against the coursing melody—rush of creek water
through a man-made chute blasted into sedimentary
rock decades ago, to power the iron mill that likely
stood on the bank on the other side. I close
my eyes and hear the waterwheel churn, clank
of ironworks. I’ve abandoned my wife again
for poetry, for extended silence that isn’t
silence after all but only strangeness. Like Frost’s
apple farmer, I can’t rub it from my eyes. I can’t
take in what’s right in front of me until I leave.
Then, I see it so clearly it scores me like the razor
Danny uses for projects, the one he’s used sometimes
to lacerate himself. An ant picks its way past, carrying
her dead sister back to the colony. Our troubled son,
twenty-one now, would enjoy this place for as long as
his attention span might endure. Love, I hate myself,
hours between us, this wretched quiet. Ruthless,
I stepped out under an embarrassment of stars last night,
pictured your sweet, lined face but then the sleek black
bass patrolling the mill pond’s murky water, rising quickly
like a blade toward some small disturbance at the surface.
