Waiting There
As others or ourselves
let’s say—furtive, then,
inconsequent and sad—
or on the edge of thought,
perhaps, or into some
predictable meandering,
the outward accelerations
of water against its shore
dissipating into erosions,
cuts and counter-cuts,
remembered as landscape,
the convenient certainties
of an abandoned past.
Is it tree or treeline
or the massing of leaves
against the sky or color
freed from shadow or something
of color deepening against shade,
the sensible bluff that heaves
above the bluff’s presumed
insensible marl? River,
again, always enclosed
by its own turnings, its
own turnings overgrown.
Copyright Credit: Michael Anania, “Waiting There” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by Michael Anania. Used by permission of Asphodel Press/Acorn Alliance.
Source: Selected Poems (1994)