indolence

And the stream like a sonatina

of minor flourishes, glistens with sky

and silver light, air cooler

where I wade in, standing in the flow

of time, amidst drift twigs, minnows

in little puckers of water, wind caressing

summer leaves. Listen with me

for the great silence behind everything—

but I am so easily distracted by this mosquito

which requires the nectar of my blood, and just think:

nothing in this moment will exist beyond memory,

not the stream’s soft muck, the startled frog

which leaps into his splash, not the clouds nor

those water striders skating past. Let us seek,

my friend, the center of a stillness

where some truth might finally be revealed

though I have only meager virtue

and insufferable desires and deserve nothing

but this red welt the mosquito left as it withdrew

and rose noiselessly and vanished in the shadows.

 

--M deO

Done