27 March 2009

Todd Boss

[from Todd Boss's Yellowrocket, Norton, 2008]

The Day Is Gray and the Lake

shifts, mercurial,
like modeling clay,

the million thumbs
of wind at work upon it,

the artist unable to come
to a single conclusion.

Just what shape should
this cold lake take

this morning?
And the trees surrounding?

The maker can't
make up his mind, always

fussing. He shuffles
the shoreline shadows

like a paint-chip deck.
The reeds.

The nervous birds.
The toads, forever lost

on mud's malleable maps.
Everything's a mess

and genius all at once,
a school for unruliness.

Even the stones second-
guess themselves, eroding.

And there: a wash of sunshine,
and some people, boating.

Yellowrocket: Poems

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