Today's poem is by Molly Spencer

Rowing, and Then Light
       

What's given me by the river, I'll leave to the river.

Islands of sky—flicker, the brim, and then, light
on the tangled marsh.

Light where the cedars toppled

bone-like and silver. And later, hours of slow progress, swaying
marsh grass and the unrushed wandering of water,

the heron

unseen alongside, the heron
rising blue and somehow silent

though surely such unfolding has a song

or a cry—the heron lifting, the heron breaking open
into flight.

And who can I tell this to now—the children rowing on
ahead of me, the far west of you?

                                                                This is my account:
I didn't see the heron edgewise
then I saw it.

Wasn't rowing at all, only dipping the blade of my one oar
here, then there, to steer a little.

Let me drift, going nowhere, in the moment
the heron met my mind

though the moment was flawed and devoid
of meaning.

The cedars were not silver, not bone-like, the heron's flight
not soundless.

I'll speak of this to no one. The river bears me along.

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Copyright © 2024 Molly Spencer All rights reserved
from Invitatory
Parlor Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission