Yahara in Winter

"But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?"
   – Robert Frost, from "A Brook in the City"









When the days go by in mid January
at the Rutledge bridge the rainy streets
shine at night by streaks a zig zag
pattern of orange lamplight flame.

It's awash over the dull black asphalt
where the buses lurch to stop sign
squeeze their brakes and the dog walkers
pull their slack leashes at the corner.

Underneath again the water flows,
the surface melted, no longer ice.
I wonder what the warm world thinks.
Do the wintering ducks flap their wings

in a sort of once-in-a-lifetime ecstasy?
The fishermen still hold their oggers
hunched over their thinning holes
then quietly slide hooks to blind fish.