Winter Solstice

Later, little claws of rain will scratch at
headlights as I walk home. Now, my body
shaken by each car on the bridge, I watch
the many-voiced flow that has become
a locus of existence, a devotion:
my life so small a thing before such power —
while so reverberant itself, I can feel
and name the state of light on skeined contours;
net, for others to consume, a fish-poem
that carries the river's taste in its flesh.
I drink the silence, eavesdropping on what
dusk and daylight have to say to each other,
the rain still soft — silk loosed from air's cocoon —
the first stutter of car beams skimming the river.