Some Fine Talks

"Lunch in my mountain kitchen
the spring provides the perfect sauce."
     –Stonehouse, 67











Sept. 24


And so we had a fine talk about ideas of reciprocity.
What is such a word it sounds too close to legal.
It is not. It is not bound by permanent scratchings
of some other men in some other city some other era.
As I open the door I overlook a back channel
of a long river that feeds into the Mississippi.
I know that lines that we have created to hem it in.
A fine loop around the water as rising banks
and twenty boats like houses afloat and at ready.
I also know the river as a circulation of wild water.
I know that the names uttered by others named
the same thing but that they all flowed over earth.
I paddle to ancient banks exploding by roots
upturned willow trees exposing a hundred wet years.
I follow the egret as she strides alone across
the thin shallows eyeing the slivers of small fish.
These are not my things; I am possessed by mystery.
While we talked of reciprocity we came up with fine
examples where we come to see things give and take.
We call it also, as the waters, by a hundred names.
It is not whether we know that I am it but whether
we give it a hundredth of a blink of our time to see.