from Natural History

Winklers Creek

After the storm, we drive out Winklers Creek

past Payne Branch Road, the valley narrowing

to rhododendron gulch roofed-in with spruce

& hemlock, here & there a blighted locust

pillaring the gloom, the all-wheel-drive

slewing gravel on the hairpin curves that trace

the stream bed, soon just pickup-rutted mud

packed hard & corrugated to the one-lane

bridge we find submerged & listing, crossboards

jacked upright, impassable.

This is where

a wiser & more cautious man would turn

back; but now, because this love is new

& no words yet have marked it, or because

I'm still too young to recognize the place

where suffering begins, I park the car

& take your hand & together we make our way

along the flood-combed grassy edge, then cross

the bridge: the road leads on, but now the air

turns cooler, songless, absolutely still,

as is the pond itself—our destination—

smooth & vitreous as glaze until

we slip beneath the clouded surface, sending

ripples all the silent way across

& back, our breathing & the gentle cluck

of reeds along the shore the only sounds.

*

I could have stayed that way. I could have lived

that moment poised upon the near of you

& treading the trout-cold, sweeping my arms

like wings through denser air. But soon the balance

tipped, a lone thrush spilled her silver coins

off in the woods, & with a flourish

you went under, then surfaced farther out,

then dove again & surfaced, stitching your way

across the darkling water, till at last

you turned & looked back: your face

a paper lantern floated on the dusk.

–first published in Southern Poetry Review