Seasonal Stream
       

I am too sick this year to cover
the ground I usually do. The ways
I part with my hand and tread
with my feet are less tried. I’ll walk
around the garden, kick a path
into the unmown grass up to the pond,
see all the ways the wind catches
at cloud edges, like fingers
ripping shreds of them.
I have half the breath I’ve had,
and the things I want to see
I sometimes see only in my mind—
this year, I know the stream within
the woods runs full of clear, cold water,
touching bare roots and open bank
with surprising swiftness.
And that it is fringed with ice, but will not
freeze yet, and when I reach there,
it will perhaps be solid, frozen,
under an inch of new draped snow.
Not now, but when I might move further,
a month or two from now,
perhaps, or in the spring

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Copyright © 2014 Gigi Marks All rights reserved
from Southern Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission