On the Yahara

"The similitudes of the past and those of the future, The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river." – Whitman, "Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry"




Yahara Spring X – Final


What can only be seen of things from the middle of the lake!
Seen along the edges at once – around the bay at Paunack,
which itself drains down into the Waubesa; Tonyawatha
across from the Yahara, Schluter Park, Olbrich, Brittingham,
Law and the B.B. Clarke Beach, all seen from the hull of kayak.
How the wind drops down out of the violent early April sky
and lands like the invisible hoof prints of a thousand stomping
caribou as I hold up black blades of the paddles as masts
and turn like a compass dial to the direction of Horseshoe bar
where the ancient timber of the city has piled, lazing
over the shoreline, their limbs holding out for simple drinks.
Others might see the black headed ducks pop up and down out of waves,
others from the Rutledge Bridge the one sole blue kayak
bouncing aimlessly around to the forces of the wind,
the black cloud coming, the rain burning east.
Others, from up two streets, along sidewalks and bike trails,
may not know the wind, might not know the spin of raw water,
so cool to the touch it makes the air seem like fire.