9 poems by L. E. Hogan

Thirty-nine feet of connecting trout stream

THERE IS RUBBLE on the shore rocks
when the stream is low and it's hard
to find a pool that's cold enough
to sustain fish even when a hatch
scatters midges where there is no cloud
nor flash flood so shallows might once
again fill full of water and fish
with expectant rise eat nymphs back
here where they belong since today
where the dog digs gravel reflecting
auburn in still stream like autumn
below a large shore and overhangs
of roots drying in this heat
digging for the wet deep down and under
this whole tangle of bleached-out river
rocks and tumbles forever in spring
without questioning a shape or weight
trying not to get caught up in a place
where things remain the same until a year
when the ground saturates and spring brings
a run-off that locals remember for years
as much as the fish remember this drought
and trout climb up to the cool mountain streams
because pools are now rare down here
quite narrow when water whips still
around bigger stones that gather mosses
in velvet time when bears look
for mates in the roar of spring before
a trickle spills around dried out deer bones
and bones turn to stone then lose their places
in miles of blurred surfaces
from another rain visiting long after the glacier
marked its place long after heavy rains
and dry spells are caught between the planting
and corn silk turning amber in water
and the shore gets smaller and dank
when the leaves begin their journey
downstream when the fish return.

Predators

I CANNOT SMELL the scent of the cat
who slept on this sweater, but do know
how the garden swells with old
and pungent herb art. In sun the fox

bows to my feline and her good
dog friends who rule this land. I hoe
and cultivate, find my dead aim
in the trust that many tales spun

this tract long before I came.
The dogs do not understand wild nature.
I also was domesticated.
Oh, give me strength to watch their sorry
looks as a bevy of vixen

feed on a much smaller body
not the cat's ... But it could be.

Winter Brook

AN ARCHANGEL is busy, lives underground
and builds tunnels for the ancient water,
coaxes melted snow down to the mouths of ponds
through funnels underneath these holy acres,

angles that sag down from the white pine
stand. Near the barn grey land rests flat.
There, the beckoned arteries burst from muddy skin
which is weak from runoff, wears rotting thatch,

thatch that bleeds itself into the thicket
of leveled veined grasses and old puffed cat-tails.
Winter Brook is carving it's name in the granite
gravel, its season shown-off in waterfalls,

arching down, down, to the culvert, to the pond,
and the hiding springs where the angel's work never ends.

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Copyright © 1996 Linda Hogan/Log Cabin Chronicles/11.96