A pond change

A Pond Change

The porto-potties are gone
so I can smell decaying leaves
and an old pick up truck

just turned off
near where the lame fisher
casts his line

Pond’s so low, beavers have left town
the remains of their lodge,
a circle of pointy sticks: barbaric ruin

Stumps they’ve left now pitted by woodpeckers,
bearing new blue signs warning “wildlife
management, keep out.”

It thanks me for my cooperation, but I'm not sure:
Perhaps I am both wild and unmanageable,
here, where weeks ago, children learned to swim or drown

Grey heron searches steadily.
I want to be that patient.
That slow.

“I’m sure you are,” the lady says kindly
to her dog,
no, to the device in her face

carrying dialogue into quiet
and me with my notebook’s silent chatter.
Crows. Ducks.

I think this is wilderness
though I am but a three minute stroll
from the door I have lived behind for years.

Everything strange
A pond change
Becoming heron.

Boys go by
hitting rocks with sticks.
Someone knows why.