For Just Now, Then

It's okay. It's just now. Then again,
Up until three years ago
I didn't really know

These quick-lidded waves, their wink,

This wry face of the flat lake,

Hiding by marshes, existed,

Even though I lived up the road
And rolled to work with the glare
Of sun off the surface in my eyes.

I never noticed. I always went back
Home, to the city, to the airport,
To the mountains, too far.

Now I'm glad it's not New Zealand.
These clouds of words in my head
Form more than sufficient torment

For me. I don't need sand flies
To eat me alive every time
I wheel to the lake view to feel peace.

This one's not so beautiful, it's true,
And it's shallow and trashy
Along the unkempt margins

Where picnickers and hunters
And whoever have left their pickings,
Droppings, and leavings.

But it has ducks and the sense
Of distance time alone provides.
The jetties and orchards age

In the way woods age everywhere,
That magic of encircling and then
Releasing their countable rings,

Silvered, moss, beetles, splinters, flowers,
Hymns to the nonhuman hunger
Of the rooted, reaching things.

These stupid words! They won't leave
Me be. There aren't enough birds left
In the weeds to eat the damn things.

Sunlight wreaks its havoc. It's just
Perfect how everything's becoming
A complete mess before it curls under

Those cold lips kissing the shore
Again and again and again,
Until the hard and rotten bits wear smooth,

Forgotten and beautiful again.
When I'm near this, this thing I need,
I'm almost the movement in the scene

As it's moving, almost a moment.
It's just hard to be in the composition
And have to move with it, have to

Move now, to be this poorly phrased part
Of all the parts that have to go on for
Getting near what we need now, then.