Water-Strider
By Aaron Baker
Though winged, he walks
on water.
Skates between elements,
skitters like thought
through the cattails.
A snake slips unseen through the underbrush.
The forest shifts and sighs, once again
won't speak its secret.
Between the trees, my father glides
through sunlight, then shadow.
Surface tension:
the strider rows forward
with middle legs, steers with back legs,
grasps with forelegs the insect
on which he feeds.
Leaning into my reflection,
my arched body is the fulcrum on which
all of this turns. The sun hollows the air, burns
it of all but the most essential sound.
Mud-slurp and leaf-stir.
And there, a contrail over the Cascades, the quick
stroke of a master's hand,
and through the high hush, the vessel itself
an insect-spark
on the burnt-in blue.
on water.
Skates between elements,
skitters like thought
through the cattails.
A snake slips unseen through the underbrush.
The forest shifts and sighs, once again
won't speak its secret.
Between the trees, my father glides
through sunlight, then shadow.
Surface tension:
the strider rows forward
with middle legs, steers with back legs,
grasps with forelegs the insect
on which he feeds.
Leaning into my reflection,
my arched body is the fulcrum on which
all of this turns. The sun hollows the air, burns
it of all but the most essential sound.
Mud-slurp and leaf-stir.
And there, a contrail over the Cascades, the quick
stroke of a master's hand,
and through the high hush, the vessel itself
an insect-spark
on the burnt-in blue.
From Posthumous
Noon
Gunpowder Press
Gunpowder Press
http://gunpowderpress.com/
Selected by Jane Hirshfield
as winner of the 2017
Barry Spacks Poetry Prize
