The Specimens
A Poem
Under the bridge grows a new kind of thing
that’s constantly moving
and leaving the nest,
The ebbing takes it away
into the subdivisions:
creeks and still water pools.
It falls to the bottom and takes on a face,
a lightness of spirit
alien to the ecosystem,
to the water at the bottom.
In the nooks of the branches
something ancient learns to heal.
A specimen, carried from white ruins
between the razors of a beak.
Dropped. Inedible, now forgotten.
Remembered only by its growth.
It sprouts.
Beneath the peat bog is a gravestone
ten feet buried under rot.
Something is still shifting there.
Patiently alive.