shad season

another leaden sky

and the smell of diesel fuel in the morning.

yet a congregation gathers (or is it city council?)

and the herons are thick across the clouds

second only to cormorants

something has shifted

where my feet stood 

they no longer stand

though its the same gravel

mud, path, warm and full of bicycles

a swift torrent

overcomes most of the rocks I’ve come to know.

this is new - holes on river right, a zig zag down what used to be a straight

wave

and in a lower eddy, powerfully

sucking small branches around and around

silver shapes flash

dinner plate size with visible eyes and

sharp spines, at least a hundred if not more

potomac pyrannhas? 

they look hungry, swirling en mass in the powerful flow, bumping against the boat

and the paddle

where’s a fishing pole when you need one? or a frying pan (as McPhee would do it), 

the human otter hungers for the ocean flesh

the spring tide pushes the silver bodies upstream,
and yet more and more are coming,
an endless torrent into the eddy
and up around the flow.

the dark side of the river; the dark side of the mind

DEATH before BIRTH

awake in the dark to

no sunrise today

just a grey to grey to grey and brown

they call it mud season up Narth.

as I get older,

the days go by more steadily,

quickly.

unremarkable maybe,

but for

here and there

a pain I didn't have before.

I watch my daughter sleep,

I make her a sandwich for school,

so fresh, her days, too fresh

for the grey to take over.

Two boats in a van

two guys 

in a van. Over the potholes, no traffic

in the murk.

I meditate on this; the murk

smell of bad cats, 

in the eddy of the back patio.

On the river, there is that aroma.

only 10 % sh#!t

90% vital substance, 

flowing into Army infrastructure

 a squat war on the horizon

a concrete pipe

to defy the imagination 

(it's so big they had to put it underground).

RENEWAL

Big mother of a bird

I think

he's that yung guy, who used to sit there speckled,

and now I can see the yellow of his talons

from a river width away.

THE WHITE ROOM

amazing

how vertical

a fluid 

can get.

before crashing

your bow

douching your nostrils.

Tom and John, high speed,
down the slot

pitted.

THE DINOSAUR

the bow wave of fear

and the spiny monster sleeps

Shreduard tempts fate, dissapears over the horizon.

I head right, towards the upper island hole,

a double jump through the upper angle wave, 

and emerge, kissing the white water, safe

above the pit, and then

plunge into it, 

just a little bit.

We wait on the breathing chest of the monster,

fear, anger, sadness

all gone downstream

J-man emerges, and tags the edge

grinning.

It's work to cross the beast's back,

that river seething, and Eddie gets eddied 

by the chunder hole as he tries to catch the top md wave,

right side up again, 

its seems the fear hadn't all gone down river.

ONLY SANE MEN FEAR DEATH
as for the rest,
they usually get 'his' story

the grateful dead made more recordings than
anybody ever.
to this we are
awake


'thine' is the glory
and ours is the sadness
of the unexamined life
only if we forget

despite the passing of
days
spring is coming
a righteous fury of indig-nation

seize the carp.