When we say we have spent our lives
does that mean passing days
watching what the wind moves around us
or handing lives over like currency?
Bills to the store clerk for wine or
Sunday supper, the years we trade
in exchange for some need or want.
The market rate for time is set
by wind, sometimes picking up pollen
to make the wheat grow. Sometimes
lifting houses like a person carrying
their burdens from one generation
to the next, just to smash
them on the ground or into the trees.
By the time cicadas break
their mid-summer sulkiness
jigsawing through afternoon,
this lake’s biggest bass are already
hunkered down in the deep
gill-flapping by the cliff
out of the heat and algae
while sun curls tall grasses
into kindling.
In this season’s lame leg
even a full moon rests
on the horizon, mornings
merging into daytime
like a cultural shift
you don’t notice
until all the decisions
have been made
the way light changes
the color of trees
even as you stand under them.
Big news and small news
trade places in between pines.
I will glide my kayak into shade,
the smartest bass hiding in the dark,
cicadas burrow deep again
leaving their crumpled skins on bark.
Grant Clauser is an editor for a news media company and a poetry teacher at Rosemont College. His sixth poetry book is Temporary Shelters (Cornerstone Press). His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. website