Water Says Airplane

by Laura L. Snyder

I.

The water is green and solid. The trees

on the shore look at the staccato of rain beginning to fall.

The lake is a drum the rain beats. The skin of water is tight and hard.

The rain plays artist; it draws itself over and over. The water has ripples,

the repeating snakes of S moving obliquely away. Water is putty

under the wind's trowel. The wind lives with water. Water

loves wind, wind bribes water.

Water is not always itself.

II.

A plane flies over water.

The plane is there in the skin of water,

the ailerons, the registration number reversed, the winking

windows of a Cessna. The trees are with the water and the airplane,

with Douglas fir, the yellow-green of cedar, and the burn of dogwood leaves

fiery in the midst. An osprey is in the water with the sky,

clouds and an eagle's white tail.

The trees are the same trees that stay rooted by the water.

The clouds are never the same, they change

the face of sky within water.

The plane escapes,

water says something else.

Wazee, Issue 13, Autumn/Winter 2008