Never Was a Paddle

News never stays. Poetry
Is not news that stays news. Poems

Fragment conglomerations
Of phrases passing downstream,

Sometimes lodging by cutbanks
And oxbows, never staying

News for long, once texts have fixed
Themselves in roots and litter.

To stay, to change more slowly,
Is to begin on your way

To that invisible day
When you’re an original

Part of the landscape. Today
The summer sun bakes the backs

Of the daughter and father
Swimming in the desert creek

With the small fry, the tadpoles,
The young frogs, and the crawfish.

Swallows tat the sky. Breezes
Toss reeds, cottonwoods, and pines.

The world is almost normal,
And the headlines shrink their type.