What I notice first
are the small pieces of things,
bits of twigs and leaves and vines
the fine river silt
Caught
in the billowings of Caddisfly nets
turned into the current
like wide open mouths
In the still, always, passing of water
Tokens of larger lives
once lived upstream
the words
coming finally
onto my unlearned tongue
The whole of it then,
swirling all debris and time
in circles and eddies of circumstance and doubt,
and downstream
laying out glassy flat
filling in
the deepest wrinkle of the world

Jack Slocomb