820 Sanctuary Trail Drive
Hardywood Park Craft Brewery
You fly to the left to avoid
the sprawl of children on that
hillside and their parents who
sip beer and nosh pizza at a
brewery that wasn’t there
last year.
The creek and swamp below
are the same: wet and good
for wading, for searching
snacks that stir the bottom
or slip toward the surface.
If there ever was a lope,
it’s your wings and the way
they stroke the air like oars
of a single scull on a nearby
river, another place you might
fish—in the shallows
or picking your prey from
between boulders like molars
feet away from each other
and far from any mouth,
even of this river.
But this creek has changed
as all this people-color
covers a newly bare ridge
that last year was mostly
gray and brown with a few
blossom-bursts and the red
spray of maple seedlings
recalling the fall leaves
that fell five months ago,
and that will again
in another six when the air
begins to chill and you
turn to the warmer
climes that you’re only
now just returning from
to find these interlopers,
including me, atop this hill
that wasn’t even a hill
or a ridge or a slope until
this brewery gave it an address
other than swamp and woods,
other than feeding ground
or a place to dip your feet
before flying off to another
wetland to test the waters
there and to measure the level
of peace and quiet, two fish
you hope to pull into your
beak and throat, cradling them
for the moment before the long
swallow, and only now digesting
the silence in the wake of your
wings like oars dipping in
water and then pausing
in air before a new
stroke in this late afternoon
light rowing toward sunset.
Pete Follansbee: Published Poems 