Canyon Creek on Buddha's Birthday

The creek spits
   beads of water and foam
plunging through the stone-
clogged bend
   pours down rocky terraces
       passes and becomes
              this pool

          above a double
              showering
                 shadowy falls

sitting here up from Sequim Prairie
       and the sea's dark pastures below
    I drink again your
sweet icy gift
   of sun-ravished
         snow

everywhere your water
    is leaping
around me
  like grasshoppers

 sun blazing gleaming
on your slick black rock

while
    a bough of young cedar
   swings and flutters
     in the canyon where you stream

and both of us
     close for an instant

        river and friend.

---

Mike O'Connor | For the Poet of Pablo Creek
Contents | Mudlark No. 7