Stream

Stream I sleep with both sun and moon, am the content and cup of water, rise and fall without the benefit of man-made law or proclamation. Fish swim in my veins. Ferns plot their scandals. At dawn I smell sweeter than a deb who stands before a mirror and dabs all her pulse points with verbena. AU my bright eyes open at noon. Count them if you can while I dance. Then I'm still but I move, my contemplation a sky that shifts from rose to blue to gray to velvet, myself the dark sound of a verb that like the Tower of Babel is clearly heard but untranslatable, a rush of sound that deep down and far away winds up its steel crane and by daybreak repaves an old road— rich and slow as molasses— from the interior of a continent to the river's black cold to the edge of the blue ocean. —Llewellyn McKernan Outside My Window I see at a glance more than a thousand oak leaves dance as they wither. What more of a cliche for denouement and death is there? But here's a coda: a huge green leaf from my caladium. I'll pretend it's a broom. Freeze-dry it like coffee. Attach it like a fig leaf to my belly. (It'll drive my love crazy!) Turn up its corners in the enigmatic yellow smile of the Oriental. Make it the centerpiece for my kitchen table. O, well! I might as well admit I can't do anything at all with it. You can call it rubber but it won't stretch. Just folds up like an oyster in its shell. Crumpled and worn like a dollar bill. Better than silver. —Llewellyn McKernan 63 ...