Quick and yet he moves like silt.

I envy dreams that see his curving

silver in the weeds.  When stiff as snags

he blends with certain stones.

When evening pulls the ceiling tight

across his back he leaps for bugs.

-

I wedged hard water to validate his skin—

call it chrome, say red is on

his side like apples in a fog, gold

gills.  Swirls always look one way

until he carved the water into many

kinds of current with his nerve-edged nose.

-

And I have stared at steelhead teeth

to know him, savage in his sea-run growth,

to drug his facts, catalog his fins

with wings and arms, to bleach the black

back of the first I saw and frame the cries

that sent him snaking to oblivion of cress.

enveloped by fog

rain, lake shimmering, blanket

of porcupine quills

the street air carries the heavy weight of the sun

the aerosolized smell of many people sharing

the smallest of spaces

—body odor, acrid auto fumes, fresh daal, urine

dogs navigating the few empty feet between people

a man crouched, sifting through trash

for pesas … a tarp with holes, a bottle covered 

in coffee grounds

by the bus stop and the empty pit of

an apartment tower rising

another man, sitting in the tin shadows

eyes down, a scrap of cloth covering his body, a straw in his ear

sentient and still — one in thousands

-

past the outer ring road

a reservoir of drinking water

a car swerves, barely missing a 

group of children

a man rides on one wheel of

his screaming motorcycle

his bare feet marked with

orange-sized scabs

my gaze falls on the square miles

of gentle ripples

fiery sun lingering on the horizon

electricity poles leading to a blind end

in the middle of the lake.

Cold winds hit my eyes, and two or three sun

dance in the kaleidoscope of tears, as I cross

this street I know so well,

where Greenland summer shines from snowpools.

-

The street’s massive life swirls around me;

it remembers nothing and desires nothing.

Far under the traffic, deep in earth,

the unborn forest waits, still, for a thousand years.

-

It seems to me that the street can see me.

Its eyesight is so poor the sun itself

is a gray ball of yarn in black space.

But for a second I am lit. It sees me.

lakes carving thick sheets of ice

through forests

that were once cut

before smaller lakes

like upper kaubashine

or garth

had names

—

roads twisted to the contours

of streams, outcrops,

sinewy marshes, lakes

except where a summer’s

worth of rock was poured

into watery depths

of lake minocqua

—

snow heaped in mountains

at the sides of parking lots

paul bunyan grinning insanely

selling pancakes and

loons painted by computers

snowmobiles blasting

along the sides of highway 51 - stretching

to ironwood and the upper peninsula

fading from forest to the

vast expanse of lake superior

where snow falls lightly

on yet unfrozen water

and giant trout sleep

among sharp beds of rock

…so

- when was it - i, drawn like blown

cloud, couldn’t stop dreaming of

roaming, roving the coast up and

down…

—Basho

oscillations of the cambridge clock tower

coursing through the cold night air

-

puddles frozen in the street

car hoods reflecting the flash

of a neighbor’s january christmas lights

-

belt of orion hidden

by the glow of some million city lights

-

red line humming over a

charles full of silt

trash bicycles and oily black

water

most tireless of travellers