At Courthouse Creek
Check out the hemlock, heavy & atwitch
with the steady, fat-lipped rain
on river left, halfway up
Salvation’s spiral staircase,
its needles feathery & beatboxed,
nothing’s eyelashes, nothing’s pulp;
check out the treetrunks, gnarl-fingered
& gothic, between the sweet pepperbush
and the rattlesnake plantain, the brook trout
beneath the convergence of two wave trains
and an eddy’s ass-end, where
the glare’s blueberry-banana,
cross hatched & curlicued; check out
the creek’s coastal range,
its lake region, tundra, & Lava Falls,
its chinese characters, sea stacks,
grocery lists, jobs without benefits;
check it out, how the birch limbs
wedged by highwater in the damp dark
amongst hellbender & hellgrammite
point to Heaven’s ten thousand
four-way stops. Change is light:
watch it, watch the sun’s lurid monologue,
thoughtless, time-splashed,
top dead center; watch it,
leaf-filtered & on the move, blister
the water’s errant flecks.