North Carolina Poetry Society   —   Zoe Kincaid Brockman Book Award



From the Creekbed

Dark green shadows flit between leaves.
I feel rain coming and there are no drops.
Black water swirls walnuts tandem
down creek where the stump sticks out,
dead heart, leafless, no sap charging once wild veins.

Limber pole, worm in the crack in the upsidedown limb
stuffed like broccoli in the stream, smells of running bream.
Eyes turn the color of pumpkinseed, follow secret courses
where colors fade into sunfish eyes, wavering.

I need a dark leap, strike, distant run,
broke line in a wondrous path of leaving.
In my boots I sweat a realm of urgency.
When will scales scatter this ease,
spirit the rippling shoot of fin and hands?


Middle Creek Poems, The Blue Coot Press, 1979, copyright
© by Shelby Stephenson. Used with the permission of the poet.




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