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By chris Date: 2008 Mar 17 Comment on this Work [[2008.03.17.22.33.2238]] |
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For these trees the withering time is over now; their leaves, their colors, long exiled from them, lie in the many poses of their still deaths. A quarter of a mile away is the river-- no ice on it yet, but the water is black, like it has no bottom. You can't see this from the car bridge five miles to the south; your eyes must almost touch the water itself. And along the leeward shore on the day I was there were more canvasbacks than I could count-- waiting, conversing, aware of dangers I would never sense. Most took off as I approached, their bodies disappearing into the white hills on the other shore. Some dove, and I saw how the black water, knowing her own, will always take them in. Today I have climbed the hill hoping to see that nearby water and check for signs of ice or birds. But I see only those same naked trees-- spreading and still-- whose uppermost branches look like capillaries tunneling outward from a common center. |