I disturb them,
they know me first, boots squelching mud, winter twig and fern.
How many pass this way unseeing
as shell bellies and sun-bathed backs dissolve into empty log-in-river,
no trace but a ripple now fading.
I regret my trespass,
my clumsy unskilled gait.
Like a child out here,
so much I don't know
all feelings
all scent and sight and sound—
but thought, what use is thought in a place like this?
This place is what it is,
speckled foam passing and passing forever.
From this promontory overlooking the river,
I see
I am what I am
more bird and granite, pin oak and painted turtle
than any law or creed.
I sit surrounded by web,
the chickadee chuckling at my predicament.
He announces my place amidst dead beakrush stalk,
igneous rock,
river oak and river oats, sycamore and ground ivy.
At first, I cannot see the web,
and then it’s there,
all around, sticking to me and I’m caught
caught in the woven filaments of mind,
invisible except by awareness' shimmer.
But I won’t break the web.
There’s room enough for mind out here.
I simply let it be, let it shimmer in the wind as I sit,
silent
watching ripples and shadow, half light turned soft,
as my dark reptilian self re-emerges to bask in late day sun.
