Clapp's Pond

The poem

Three miles through the woods Clapp's Pond sprawls stone gray among oaks and pines, the late winter fields

where a pheasant blazes up lifting his yellow legs under bronze feathers, opening bronze wings;

and one doe, dimpling the ground as she touches its dampness sharply, flares out of the brush and gallops away.

*

By evening: rain. It pours down from the black clouds, lashes over the roof. The last acorns spray over the porch; I toss one, then two more logs on the fire.

*

How sometimes everything closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments flowing together until the sense of distance - - - say, between Clapp's Pond and me - - - vanishes, edges slide together like the feathers of a wing, everything touches everything.

*

Later, lying half-asleep under the blankets, I watch while the doe, glittering with rain, steps under the wet slabs of the pines, stretches her long neck down to drink

*

from the pond three miles away.