One Drop

By the stream, where the ground is soft
and gives, under the slightest pressure—even   
the fly would leave its footprint here   
and the paw of the shrew the crescent   
of its claws like the strokes of a chisel   
in clay; where the lightest chill, lighter   
than the least rumor of winter, sets the reeds   
to a kind of speaking, and a single drop of rain   
leaves a crater to catch the first silver   
glint of sun when the clouds slide away   
from each other like two tired lovers,   
and the light returns, pale, though brightened   
by the last chapter of late autumn:   
copper, rusted oak, gold aspen, and the red
pages of maple, the wind leafing through to the end   
the annals of beech, the slim volumes   
of birch, the elegant script of the ferns …

for the birds, it is all
notations for a coda, for the otter   
an invitation to the river,
and for the deer—a dream
in which to disappear, light-footed   
on the still open book of earth,   
adding the marks of their passage,   
adding it all in, waiting only
for the first thick flurry of snowflakes   
for cover, soft cover that carries   
no title, no name.


Ex Libris, by Eleanor Wilmer