Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Flounder

Once, I saw a flounder in a tree.
Not in a dream, so it took time
for the sight to tighten its grip- 

high in the branches of an oak,
haloed by fins, the body shook,
gills on fire in oxygen sunlight

until I could see its struggle
was under the wings and weight
of a hawk half hidden by leaves.

The osprey must have ripped it
from the shallows of the bay
and flown all that way to eat.

Years later, I'm not dreaming
again, thinking how unthinkable
the talons, what it might be like

to end up astonished by fate.
Though now I've seen more of
the minefield, wings torn apart

on the eighty?first floor, life
upside down, fish flying to their
deaths in the tops of the trees.

Passing Through Elk Lick Township

He walks. We drive. Waves as we pass by.
Through the windshield's glass, I can see
his eyes are blue, his cotton collar askew.

He is young, his face pink with the hot sun
of Pennsylvania, cheeks above his wispy
reddish curl of beard shining at the world.

He steps lightly with his scythe, returning
over tarmac from his field to a farmhouse
where no phone line goes, no power grid,

no television, no newspaper, no gun,
no gas-fed engine, no refrigeration
but the chill of winter's hoarded ice.

No light except for the glow of kerosene
and handmade candles flickering at night,
enough to see what Amish need to see.

He walks. We drive. Strides as if he knows
the weight of a bale of fresh-bound hay,
tied only to his land, his folk, his God.

Late October, High Sierra

He knows he has walked too deep
into the aspen grove
when he discovers gold
surrounding him in light.

Here, where earth is dyed
bright as a saffron robe,
he believes he's found at last
one of many paths to heaven.

At the feet of trembling trees,
he bends
to kiss their fallen hems,
to touch their brilliant leaves,
thinks of his father
who loved this shade of light.

And now it is the son
who cannot go on without
clutching color to his heart,
lifting leaf after leaf,
asking each its golden truth:

Why now? For whose eye?
How cold does it have to get
before every one of you
will finally turn, blaze up?

Tennessee Valley Cove

Here the steamship Tennessee
broke herself on the beach.
The weight of 1850s iron
groaning to the sand. Fog
shrouding rocks. Once,
the scour of a three?day storm
showed me her skeleton,
the huge half?buried ribs.

For half a life I've walked
this berm, crossed inland
to watch the pond filling
with silt. Reed by reed
the open water shallowed.
Twenty years to drive the flock
of ring-necked ducks
toward the deeper end.

Let the marsh take twenty more.
Green was not meant
to cover everything.
I've seen how reeds resist
the wind, as they grow
old. How a few steps west,
the valley ends, and there
begins the fetch of sea.

William Keener is a lawyer for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco. His chapbook, Three Crows Yelling, written with poets Bill Noble and Michael Day, won the 1999 National Looking Glass Award sponsored by Pudding House Press of Johnstown, Ohio. Keener's poetry and essays have appeared in various magazines and literary journals.