WATERMARK

A slow, slow waking into

a foggy morning. In the night

I woke to the soft ticking of rain

 

on the windows. I am looking,

carefully, for a poem, in all the bare

branches of trees; under the stones

 

on the path; in the cold, low

river; in the colorless sky. In the

evening a huge crescent moon floats

 

above downtown, as if it had risen

from the spike on the tallest building.

Green is pushing up, from the hard

 

ground, through soft, composted flower

beds, through the tough skin of tree

limbs. Sunlight creeps earlier and

 

farther into this garden each longer day,

and as the season widens and opens,

my life narrows and thins down,

 

falling, to this one bud, this tiny press of

clematis, this small space, in this small

town, on this small, blue world.