Water Striders on Papermill Creek

Basket of Summer Summers follow summers in an endless chain, The bill of greenness is not paid in full, Deeper in dust the Piper plays and still They follow him into the beauty hill. For the fine flower, for the white silk bird, For the deep fire and the plum we lost in dreams— Each summer comes and sways and touches us— Each summer dies and leaves us all alone. —Marion Schoeberlein Water Striders on Papermill Creek (after a lithograph by Richard Lang) Do they delight in being lighter than water, or is their only grace that of predators? Once I saw an emerald hopper vault the creek and miss. Oh, the water striders danced then on their wet web, came swiftly striding on telegraph stilts to cover the carapace with living hair. When they had finished their gravy and meat they picked their teeth, told a few jokes and then went dutifully back to walking the surface tension between fish and bird, between shadow and sun. —William Witherup Another Dandelion Poem My father never spoke in images but drawled his cliches and hollered them at children passing. "I could walk if I had a hoe," he said. "Can't use a hoe in the house," I explained, and he grinned a twisted "Hrrumph." "But in the spring," he said, "I could lean on a hoe all day. If I had a garden." He addressed the words to the window where the snow that had nearly kept me home seeded the sky. He gripped the idea hard like he gripped the hospital bed, like the cancer gripped him. "Never know," he said, "come spring, I may pop up like a dandyline." —Carolyn Reams Smith 71 ...