for Tom Mallouk
We paused where the river
waited behind a boulder,
trout sipping caddis flies
from the swift current,
tree swallows swirling
over water for slow rises.
Tom cast quills from the boat’s bow
and I tossed mends from the stern.
We hear so much through silence—
water’s diphthong over rocks,
crows waking waxwings
in the shore cottonwoods,
what wind does to the grasses
and the creases of our faces.
Ease is a kind of forgetting
in a world that’s never easy.
What you know only
in those still moments
is the buoyant murmur
of red-wing blackbirds,
the bend of willow birch
dragging in the ripple,
something out of sight,
how this living is pretending,
like hope, but smaller,
waiting for delight,
that reward for almost
knowing how things work,
luck on the edge of emerging
then sometimes getting it right.
Grant Clauser’s sixth poetry book, Temporary Shelters, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, Kenyon Review and other journals. He’s an editor for a news media company and teaches poetry at Rosemont College.
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