To Hear the Fish Sing

I’m down at the water’s edge

Where the current laps the muddy shore

Filling the animal tracks with liquid silver.

The morning sun rides the willow,

Casting lemon light through fingers

Of mist creeping home to shadow.

Time is on the turn, past and present

Weaving through wormholes

Among the alders and dogwood

Like filtered light through a barn door.

The skylark sings above and the river

As it glides over stone heads, worn smooth

And mute now in the bubble and chatter

Of the river bed where ochre stains soft

Their once sacred presence.

I crouch like a timid creature to listen;

A primeval man, senses sharp as flint

The pulse of the earth awakening

To my ears, the stirrings of bees in the meadow,

Spying the green-legged moorhen skulking,

Flowers greeting the sun: but the river ever

Recites its incantation, its spell forever

Breathing life to the land.

Then I yield to its rhythm

Sense its flow and rush,

Its poetry and wish song:

Then I stoop to hear the fish sing.