for Katherine
Walking at Sandy Ridge Pond,
joe-pye and rag weed stiff
against summer’s last breeze,
cattails and egrets and geese,
a line of dead wood trees,
a standing scrawl of calligraphy,
turtles, bodies sunk in muck,
thrust green necks forward,
ignoring danger, warming blood.
One charmed by savage beauty
walks beside me, takes my hand.
Her smile points to the small fire
of the sun’s rays as it divulges
the dappled spray of a duck’s distress.
From her voice comes the sound
delight makes when it leaps past
the lips toward the profuse
colors of the gravid world.
Her alert eyes say – see –
and I see what she sees,
layered revelation under
a sun blazed cerulean sky.
I walk with my mind’s eye.
She walks with her eyes
minding the lush world.
Walking with her,
I get a finer Earth.