Evening at the Lake
Within the mountain's shadow you face the sun:
Light disappears just when the fish are biting.
Dusk covers the marguerites and clover,
shepherd's purse, birch and pine and alder.
And leaves turn their undersides
to the darkening sky, forecasting rain.
Insects full of our blood will race in
low over the water with their terrible hum.
We wait as if we don't know what we're waiting for,
watching as the bird arcs over the water the way
it did last year. I see in your face how time stops
while we wait, and then time begins.
Nellie Hill's work has appeared in many journals. Of her two books, and two chapbooks, the most recent is My Daily Walk (Pudding House). She has an acupressure practice in Berkeley, CA.
This is an electronic version of a poem published in Psychological Perspectives,
Volume 54,
Issue 3, 2011, p. 361. This poem is available at:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332925.2011.597271
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