On Monona

"I feel the sky, the prairies vast – I feel the mighty northern lakes,
I feel the ocean and the forest – somehow I feel the globe itself swift-swimming in space;" Whitman, from "To the Sun-Set Breeze"









Morning, early, before the great rise of orange
over the bulbous blue chatter of the lake has begun,
the fathers stand at the corner of Rutledge,
hands and elbows folded against the lake wind,
shuffling their children off through the rustle
of golden leaves in between cars and onto the bus.
Behind, through the short back street, a sliver
of the coming cold steel blue of the lake,
one seagull alarmed and padding the sky above by wings;
as we drive by, careful, in and out of the cars,
we know the morning and its own careful hues.
The lights blinking outlining the windows of the bus,
roars off into the long hours of the day,
away, away, school across the street from the Yahara
      they go
the mind of the river with them, blessed.