valentine
Clouds are quiet as an older couple
comfortable with the softening of age.
The temperature is low even for this altitude.
We have taken its advice and layered:
thirty-eight years, parka, flannel, fleece.
Two deer raise their heads from the water
where they drink but are not alarmed, game
does not follow hunt this far down river.
A heron shivers like a statue as if to cherish
the instant before it claims a trout a victory
for all herons. We too are still, if we make
a sound it’s a quick gasp of lung to remind us
our biology, the same bald eagle as last
spring, the wind from its wings has smoothed
the sky like a crumpled sheet of paper. Now
it reads us from a list of heights it plans
to reach today.
by Charles Carr
Twitter: @selfrisinmojo
Editor’s Note: The imagery of this poem is astonishingly beautiful, and quite fitting for this day.
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