Today's poem is by Dawn Manning

The Day After
        For David Eye

Now that I live by water, I see grief
is the great blue heron
breast deep in the flow—
splayed wings skewed
into clumsy arches

as he tamps the air down
into his own reflection
with all the might hollow bones
will allow—the grip of surface tension
doesn't give way to a force

less than an entire self.
A teetering bulk balancing
the lopsided weight of will,
he pitches with and against water and wind—
nearly capsizes as he lifts off,

skims the crisscross of cables and wires
cutting through the view:
the red bridge and stone house,
the horizon dissected into too many pieces
to puzzle back together

without the seams showing.
The creek ripples where he stood;
the spruce
scatters needles, seeds
next spring with heavy cones.

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Copyright © 2024 Dawn Manning All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission