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Out of
Time by Ken
Shiovitz Scarcely rippling waters shimmer About the basal bark of flooded forest Of leggy, randomly spaced Sugar Maples, Nearly identical in lamp pole girth and length, Lichen encrusted trunks stretching to treetops, Aging in concert, then frozen in time. Noonday light filters through leafless branches, Defining shadowy circles of lofty heron nests, Large clumps of woven sticks with sedge grass linings, Casting complex patterns of glint and dark reflection Upon the soothing surface of running clear shallows, Which seep underground deeply to smother living roots. Built slightly downstream, a massive beaver dam Shamelessly deflects the smallest of rivulets By complex blockage of interlacing logs and branches, Lined and filled with softly sloping mound of sand, Scooped with paddle tail and packed pertly in place, Sends water wandering among growing stands of hardwoods. Far above the gently perking artificial pond, Embedded in canopy, nearly level with nesting herons, Leafy camouflage hides a gray, weathered-wood blind, Secured by lag bolts to four clustered maple trunks, Swaying floor penetrated by rusty-hinged trap door, Above access ladder of shaky stakes nailed centrally. Barely beyond the fringing shore-muck floats a rowboat, Shallow in draft, with wooden hull unpainted and worn, Long oars removed from locks for shoving off from land With enough force to glide between nearest emergent trunks, Pushing at them to steer and power the last few boat
lengths Before reaching the bottom rung of that unsturdy ladder. An arm, thrust out from the boat, meets a mossy trunk, Which, internally rotten throughout its 40 foot height, Instantly falls in almost equal two foot segments, Fan-folding to smack the waters in a single splash, Like a perfect Olympic swan dive, Startling the visitor with suddenness and ensuing silence. The visitor watches as two experienced observers Clamber up the slatted ladder and, holding with one hand, Flip opened the hatch, to haul their bodies through the
hole…. But, despite desire to watch the wing thrust of descending
heron, The leggy grasp of claw onto arched edge of gape-filled
nest, and The slither of regurgitated fish inside funnel bill of
pimply young, He will simply freeze upon the third slat of the ladder. |
