Clammer (M.A. Reilly, Maine, 2014)


Cloud-Path
 - by Tess Gallagher
With steps freshenedby wearing a man’s cast-off shoes,I follow the rain-rutted roadas far as the fishing boatsturned upside downon the soggy bank, their oarssecured elsewhere to provideagainst thieves.
Mottled light through waterside trees over thebowsand sterns means tradingfish for birds. I take up the invisible oars
put by for just this occasion: a banishingscald of sun blotted inexactlyby a succession of windblown cloudsable to lift the entire flotilla.
A birdflies through me.    Thena fish.