PHYLLIS BECK KATZ, POET
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POEMS/ May Mud Flats

picture
May Mud Flats

When the locks closed tight
against the heavy rain to come, 
the river sunk down, retreated up  
dry inlets widened deep 
above its dams– and left behind 
broad dark lakes of mud, 
strewn with rotted logs, old bottles,
clumps of river grass, buried 
boulders, plastic bottles, fishing 
hooks and lines, rusted tin cans–
all resurrected from their
watery graves. No place now 
for kayaks or canoes, skiffs 
or shells for eager rowers,
but a mecca for weary 
shore birds sailing north, 
place for prying, poking
urgent beaks, digging deep 
for worms, for crayfish, crabs, 
and mussels: flocks of sandpipers
plovers, dunlins, all tourists
for a day or two in the erratic 
fields of mud between 
New Hampshire and Vermont.

On display at The Sewing Studio as part of St. Johnsbury's Poem Town  during the month of April 2015.


Copyright 2018, Phyllis Beck Katz. All rights reserved.