30 July 2023

By Philip Kuepper

I.

Mystic River lies like a Chinese silk scroll,
still in the still morning.
Boats at anchor sit in perfect reflection,
as does a single piling.
And as I watch, a cormorant
is woven into the silk
as it lands atop the piling.
The silk is aquamarine blue because of the sky.
And the cormorant’s reflection is pinned to it
like a cut piece of jet.
From admiring this, my eye is drawn
to a man boarding an outboard.
He is being woven into the silk upside down.
He pulls on the cord of the motor.
It buzzes into being.
And he and the boat set off slowly,
ripping, gently, a tear in the silk,
that sews itself closed as the boat’s wake disappears.
The buzz of the motor is swallowed
by the quiet in the distance.
After their passage, the scroll, again,
lies still and whole.

II.

Appears a rower who draws my eye,
weaving his way into the silk,
weaving his actual self,
and his reflected self.
He is also being watched by the cormorant.
His shell is yellow, so it appears
he is weaving a streak of sunlight
into the reflected aquamarine sky,
sunlight that fades as he passes,
none of which, at first, appears to affect
the impassive faces of white houses facing the river
that are woven, reflected, in the silk,
but faces the rower’s wake does in fact affect,
the wake waking each of their faces with expression,
as the rower rows past each one.
The animate has touched to motion
the still silk of the river.

(17 July 2023)