Gliding along the surface of the pond,
two wood ducks land and split the water
into knives of movement, rippling out
in broken lines and interference patterns;
the crickets wheel through the star-pattered
night, blessed by the songs of frogs
and bugs, the light sticks out of the moon
like that of an arc-welder.
I hear the plops of the frogs, into the pond,
away from the snakes, hunting
park ranger, berry spot hidden, another banger bleeding
and melting in the moonlight, unheeding
the imperatives of teeth, weeding
out the strike from the movement, anticipated
easing out. This nature haunts, stalks.
If I weren’t so scared all the time, taunts, hawks
looking but never dying, not daring the size comparison
but the shivers of a wet dog don’t prevent the docks
from banging in the evenings, carried up and down
by a distant boat’s passing, blurred in a cut of sound
stretching against the loon’s aching call, in a glut
the spruce trees rise on the island,
a semaphore of shadow, immune to the moon.
That I do anything is a miracle
of minor antecedent, empirical or not
I’m heading to spherical to assert that hysterical
tendency to squeal the sublime.
A grouse grouses. An owl hoots.
A coyote calls across the valley.
The polyphonic frog though,
on a frond in a pond, near lily pad alley
it bears against you like a tidal wave
a bridal path in another night and day
a revitalized act, rejuvenating sway,
the sound of wind through sand
suddenly interrupting and sifting glee
the crescendo blind to akimbo roars, an elder
knocking at the door, the ghost of all left behind
whichever way it went, gone is the word.
