Poems

She Flies,
Seeking Goldfish*

A bird perched on the rump of a horse
She rides, seeking goldfish,
Taking the sinewy motion of her mount
For her own.

Or else she flies, flees, tracing
A looping path through the aspens.
The watcher sees her disappear
On a curving trajectory behind a tree.

She does not reappear on the other side.
He is puzzled.
Can she change loops so fast?

He seeks the hiding tree and sleuths air only.
The watcher wonders where she has flown.
Perhaps there are goldfish there?
A horse whinnies from the underbrush, paws stone.


*Published in the Aspen Anthology, and again
in the Berkeley Poetry Review, 1976.