for Kirsten

We were kneeling in a cove, and while between the water
	   and our knees was a canoe, layers of epoxy & fiber,
	above like a whistling bullet a black duck

shot for the edge of the trees, which reached like
any good trees beyond their edges; and there was
a rhythm involving the dip and then the purchase

of the blades, a hip-swivel and another dip & press
of the wooden paddles’ blades; and we were thoughtless,
minds reaching like branches reflected 

on dusklit water, as far down as up. No wind,
and the clouds were loblollied — indigo, licorice.
Soon there’d be a moon in this journey of stasis 

and motion, and as we drifted, laid the paddles askance
gunwales, duck gone, we remembered a silence
that hadn’t tried to be quiet or coy or colorless,

in which even the darkness shone, raw as mist—
a silence so simple that now the heron’s blear,
the maple, lupine shoots, and alder rose

in our eyes as though we’d never bear
the same rain twice; and the moon was there,
just there, further than where the duck had been,

east & inward too, and we were breathing again,
holding the paddles again, and with a softer touch,
tasting lichen, the heady mellowness of birch.

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