(6/24/17)
for Sandy
1. Convenience Store
parallel
to candy bar racks, cardboard bins
filled
with lead sinkers, pyramids & oblongs,
the
addition of gravity to current,
carrying
lures down to sturgeon depth; bobbers
meantime,
red & white confections, put you in
mind
of floating; we talk about watching the twitch
on
still water as the fish nibbled sending
gray
ripples out in circles a long time past
2. Pastoral
the
llama watching a flock of sheep as it
kneels
in the cottonwood’s shade hasn’t been sheared;
heat
hasn’t started to shimmer off blacktop,
but
an osprey rides a low thermal over
that
hayed pasture; a kestrel swoops up, perches
on
a power line, goes still against spotless
blue
sky—it stretches deep in this heat; flowers
have
replaced the engine of the red farm truck
3. Strawberry Picking
snow
fields on the three mountains rise north & east;
scarlet
hearts on their runners in rows lining
that
knoll; juice on fingers, dust in sneaker mesh,
orange
sun hat shading your face as you crouch—
light
translated to that sweet taste on the tongue,
juice
oozing from bags, the bottom layer pressed—
downhill,
hydrangeas reflect sky, daisies
reflect
sun as if this was a child’s painting
4. Multnomah Channel
bald
eagle soars between sun & moored houseboats;
father,
mother, children each casts a line from
rocks
just down the channel from where we duck in
the
cold wake the sailboat’s inboard engine
transmits
to the shore; water that green black blue
the
Chinese call nature’s color, at least in
translation;
rocks sharp underfoot, cottonwood
pollen
floating: lightness, risk, as if children
Jack Hayes
© 2017
