Poem Shards

Light Loves Water
 Old River Wind
    Takes the sentimentality of the out-of-doors
     ripping the facade off of the fiction
        of the romance of the climber's life
           wind loves stone 
             stone loves river
               river loves the sea

       Old River Wind
          Takes a box of lures and gives them to the boys
     who fan out along that long bend
         finding ledge beside the flow
               and put their lines in.

                      Old River Wind
            doses off for an hour 
               until one of the tykes comes running over
                     fish flopping on his line.

  Old River Wind
        chased the little boy across the plautaeu
      where there are no railings.

  At the end of the sky
       your hopes turn into a bird
           and fly
                   away 
                  off towards another world
      another mesa.

      At the end of the mesa
           the path just skirts along the ledge
     long drops to the far below where there is no river.

      At the end of a poem
         the poet has forgotten how he got out here in the first place.
     There are no more matches in the match tin, no more 
                   smokes for our forlorn sojourner.
       Out there where the wind meets the sky
        an ill-flicked match
            can light the world on fire.