A Boundary Waters Poem: Driftwood

Driftwood

Sometimes, through the mist,
I can see the lichen advancing.
Creeping across granite slabs
greening in the shadows,
transposing the hours and
years into
moments
lost
in

the changing
of the guard
where dawn leaves the
deepest, thickest darkness
behind and lifts the blanket
off the tree tops.

The lake waters
come for us
at
first
with slow unassuming
ripples,
rippled,
then in earnest.
Rising in gaseous form,
tendrils reaching into
camp like fingers
of the wilderness
itself, searching
for you and I.

We sit squinting at bobbers
blurred to nothingness,
far out on the edge
of the lily pads,
Our trepidatious touch
with the bottom
and yesterday balancing
on the edge
of what’s plausible
and lost sleep.

It’s too early for sunfish
but the big pike are sight
hunting through the
weeds that climb up
from the sandy bottom
in feathery forests.

Your bobber disappears
and I’m reminded
of what this place
will look like when the
sun burns off all
the mystery and
the two of us
are real
again.

Behind me in the
forest, a twig snaps
and it occurs
to me
that
we may not
have much time left.


©Timothy James Stouffer 05262016
All Rights Reserved Ely, Minnesota