Leith Water Walks
By Lucinda Madsen
When the silhouettes of scissors twist above,
I swear I hear it.
“You’re home!” cry the welcome swallows–
but it’s not my home,
and they don’t really cry, they swoop
low, swallowing bugs up as they cut open
the sky.
Whatever scraps I find, I paste
together. I make a mosaic of the river
and its reflection in the sky.
Like that one dusk the light turned so strange,
and I had to rush to the river
to see it all turned red and raw,
the horizon steaming like all the world’s wildfires doused.
Or when the sweeping cycle of gulls
got flung off course, like paper airplanes jerked about
by the angry gusts they usually temper so easily.
The calm times should not be forgotten either:
the day I saw a cormorant catch an eel
and gulp its wriggling length down
too quick for the gathering
gull bullies.
Or the couples taking their daily strolls–
him waddling atop the center wall,
her pedaling through the water below,
honking evenly back and forth
as touch, to check
are you still there?
I have no sounding board, but the fluttering
whirl of a fantail, twirling down from above like a sycamore
seed.
It’s all for the flies I stir up, I know–
either way, I’ll count her as a friend.
Lucinda Madsen is a sophomore studying Environmental Engineering.
