Page 78 - Vol. VI #1

69
On a Line by Robert Duncan
Magic is passionate dispersion.
In the river, a forest appears where no forest is. Its trees shimmer and sway against a sky that is no sky, or is a sky
in which stones float.
Back on the path toward home,
a long-leg spider, big one,
startles from its barricade of bark and floats into the moss,
and a huge maple branch, long splintered from its trunk, still does not fall. Caught
and held aloft by all
these slender limbs,
it does not hover; it depends.
After Thanksgiving
And then one morning everything is glass. The river tumbles marbles over stone.
Ice hardens on each quiet pool’s surface
so that, where yesterday you couldn’t know whether the single leaf suspended there was floating or still clinging to its bough,
today its place is fixed. Nothing reflects.
The rime of frost has warped and set the text.
michAel ThursTon