A Devotion of Sorts
Huff & puff a good five hundred yards carrying the old canoe up slope, tie it to the car then slide back down to shore to fetch the gear. Today, you landed nothing, not even scrawny sunfish, though
you flung each lure in your arsenal at fallen logs & wilting lily pads where the big bass lurked in early summer. But by mid-morning it was only you floating out there with the few remaining
ring-necked ducks. They dove repeatedly, each time surfaced empty as your creel & finally flew away. Then mostly silence, except at one point a freight train in the distance groaned to a halt. Now you stand & look across
the lake. The surface has returned to glass. No evidence you paddled there. Somehow, it’s late September & you’re still determined to raise trophies from the depths. You bend, pick a flat, smooth stone & skip it. Why?
To watch the ripples dissipate? Tomorrow you’ll be back, but maybe with a different fishing pole, perhaps some lively shiners instead of artificials. Again, the next day. You’ll keep on showing until the first real snow.
Too Early
The first few flakes drift aimlessly, it seems, so delicate they vanish instantly in your hair & on your lashes as you look skyward, muttering that it can’t amount
to much, at least not this soon in the season when the sweet & spicy scent of roses still floats from your garden & this morning you were out canoeing, binoculars zoomed
on a flock of red wings perched & singing in green, unbending reeds. But you know better: by midnight, the yard may well be buried deep & pocked with meandering tracks you can’t decipher,
the largest of which—yes, somehow always the largest— wind their way right up to your front door.
A previous contributor to Gargoyle, Richard Jordan’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Terrain, Cider Press Review, Connecticut River Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, The Squannacook at Dawn, won first place in the 2023 Poetry Box Chapbook Contest. He serves as an Associate Editor for Thimble Literary Magazine.