Tributary
       

Just beyond a bend in the river
A soup of two birds

Looses roots from the mud
Of the iron-red marsh.

They create a current of water.
Otherwise white in the white light

One stretches its rust-stained neck,
Tips up to feed. Pale irises rise

Amid the swan pair
Nesting between alder-lined streams.

It is let loose. It has gone to ruin.
It breathes, uttering life. Against

The southern sky the mountains sawtooth
In their licit coldness. Below

Is their labor, repeating.

Copyright © 2010 Joan Kane All rights reserved
from The Cormorant Hunter's Wife
NorthShore Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission