Muddy Prints, Water Shine
Muddy Prints, Water Shine Carol Peters Hakalau Hawaii 2008 Kayaking Folly Creek I want to turtle along, slide my kayak into a tidal creek, flare the white paddle into green water and skim between the tips of grasses, swing the pointed bow around a bend to see the sun rise on the first of November, the wind blow up across land and water, an S-shaped channel of shine bearing shallows here, narrows there, dawdle without a map to a sandbar where gulls and hooded mergansers, cormorants, willets, and pipers gather to sleep or dry their wings or balance on one leg, hop from time to time, not feeding but alert to possibility. Philomel Before she learns mourning a girl discovers black horses, black bees, a blossom’s groin, grackles and sunflower seeds. A swollen moon, wafer-thin, rises in a milk-blue sky. The nature of water is to run. Grass roots in mud. The wafer forced between her lips clings to the roof of her mouth where she can’t taste or say, at ...