summer:winter creek

July stream. Too low to coddle an oak leaf,
loose molecules falling into the dusty aquifer.

Backswimmers and pollywogs hike Miocene
granite and old breezes bubbling to the surface.

The coolness encircles fiddlehead shoots,
eddies at the roots of cattails and sedge.

This is the way our water lopes to the ocean.
Evaporates. Returns in a tsunami of winter rage.

Rampages chunks of road:mountain:home
over the post office bridge, sweeps round back

behind Joe’s market where creek-rats tent and grill
stolen meat. Dad slogs home through another storm.

Covered in mud up to his chest. Lugging a box of wet
food from the post office to our Hodgson Circle home.