August 2014

The Oxbow of the Connecticut

            by David Davis

The water lies in a loop curling back

upon itself so that the small figure

in the canoe can almost touch

the surface he will be gliding on

ten minutes from now, the way

time rises up in sinuous loops

over the scene, turning back toward itself—

I’ll be here three months from now

and that moment seems nearer than the bends of life

I will navigate to reach it,

and the events after that

will flow in this direction,

to the way we go out and come back,

a little bit farther,

and a little bit changed.

David Davis is a member of the Powow River Poets in Newburyport, is Poet-in-Residence at Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Joppa Flats center, and is currently editing an anthology of en plein air poetry.  His book of poems Crossing Streams on Rocks was published in 2013.