hesitates, and subsides
in small splashings of light.
he lies listening, eyes still shut:
is it the voice of a young woman
that he hears upstream? But it goes on
earnestly, eagerly, the tones
explanatory, never pausing
for a breath, never varying
in volume: they are water-sounds.
He opens his eyes and sees
three aspens full of light,
one of them against the dark
of an old pine, all three quiet
at the moment. Onset of boredom
both with the sounds of the creek
upstream and the aspens alike
involuntarily declaring themselves.
A faint breeze that hasn't yet
reached him strikes the trees, making
a kind of silent clinking
with fi ne spikes of light from
the leaves in movement....
Fairly good logs can be made