7 May 2023

By Philip Kuepper

Sleek described the scene:
Sleek athletes
slipping into sleek shells
on the silver river
slick with early light.
A gull laughed.
(Some do, you know, laugh.)
Anyhow, one did laugh
from atop a piling.
But the sleek athletes rowed
aloof to the laugh,
and aloof to all else,
save the coach pacing them
through a bullhorn,
that sounded a rebuke
to the gull’s laugh.
The rowers slipped silkily
beneath the highway bridge.
Their muscles, slick with sweat,
glistened, as did the river,
sheened with the deepening light.
I lost sight of them, then.
They had slipped from my sight.
The gull laughed at that,
or so it seemed.
He was looking directly at me.
I am, at times, convinced
Nature has us all figured out.

(14 March 2023)