Contemplation with Distant Scenes and Loon

All day I've been an old parchment written on
too many times: rain forest outside Ketchikan

glowing like green stars; slopes of the Gaisberg
and the Watzmann looming like a family of ice giants

as we climbed; the hemmed-in ribbon of woods
two blocks from home on Riley Creek. And now

in the shadows of Horseshoe Lake, the silent trees
lie out on the water like dancers. Lily pads

and watergrass rest and waver on the surface.
They register everything, remember nothing,

make what they need from what they are given.
I'll sleep poorly in my borrowed tent,

dream of some western mountain I've seen
only from an airplane. The old trees

and older stones will offer themselves to anyone
willing to pull an oar over and over against

the slate-gray water. Above me the murmur of others,
the clink of pots. Soon I will climb the bank

and we'll sit and eat together. A loon swims
right up as though in appraisal or approval,

sharp head reflected like a ghost soul in the lake.