There is a little, rhythmic lapping
against the inches of shore long
after the speedboats & skiers have passed,
not wake, but the ghosts of waves,
fading into the silence of water grasses.
I watch the Rappahannock become again glass
under flecked canopy of cloud, but do not see
the two osprey, hunched away
in their aerie offshore nest
from their dead netted brother.
Swung decayingly in the cruel July breeze,
he is just one too many, for all of us.
The knife-cries of the young
hunger for other sustenance, want
to swallow the wild wetness of life
whole. The river creeps in, indomitable,
filling our shadows with the vivid sun
of summergreen, as far as the eye can see.
The birds take flight, and there is no lament
in the urge of their feathers. Pulling back
the beachtowel from the water’s reach,
I think, too, we all should rise
up, and be further from death than that.