After Maria Popova and for Josh Sapan and The Riverhouse
We name what we see and there are ways to see everything.
This morning, after the river cleaned and cleared itself,
The thick, jagged sheets of ice now gone, the phantom river
Once pushing through the then solid coverlet of snow, now gone,
Gone, and streaming down as one river now to the Delaware Water Gap,
We see two ducks diving for fish at the riverbank, their bodies
Curving into a lowercase ‘c,’ or a partnered dance of sharps and flats
On the bars of the river’s length. We reach for The Sibley Guide to Birds
To learn their names: Red-Breasted Merganser and Hooded Merganser.
We watch these beauties now, unfettered, with their hooded tuft of hair,
And their black and white mask, here, at the break of winter when the sun
Has melted everything in sight. Even the December air is not what it was.
