Haskell Lake
By Ray Sharp

Standing in a kitchen,
two hands in soapy warm water,
looking past the double window
to the frozen lake beyond
the jack pines and the oaks,

I’ve bumped the wire basket
where the ripe bananas hang
and have set it to swinging
synchronous with the bird feeder
under the eaves in the wind,

hypnotic. My thoughts swing
to and fro, here and there
and nowhere and over the lake
whose ice crystals sparkle
like star seeds strewn

by a silent comet in the night.
The oak leaves are brown
and so are my eyes. The sky
is blue as my beating heart.
What is the sound of animals

grieving, the gray squirrel
at the feeder, the chickadees,
the fishes asleep under the ice?
What are their secret rituals,
the words of their love songs?

Ray Sharp lives in the rural, rugged and remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, near Lake Superior. He will be the featured poet in the June 2012 edition of Contemporary American Voices, and his debut poetry collection, Memories of When We Were Birds, will be published in 2012. His poems have appeared in many on-line and print journals, and can be seen at raysharp.wordpress.com.

Advertisement