Visiting Skagit County

Broad, flat. Even cultivated
the Skagit is river-made strip malls
creep north along the Interstate and
in fifty years will bury its hearty fields
a dozen cows stand in a corner
of pasturere-chewing old dinners;
the effort to lean downand feed
tiresome and one stomach’s already bloating.
A wide patch of snow geese have settled nearby
with others circling lazily overhead
those on the ground pick at scraps of grain
a late plowing has scattered
among clumps of coal-colored mud
perhaps to lure them.
A fair November day of colored leaves
now mostly grounded, the few left hanging
flutter alone, no longer
low-clattering
against each otherlike shuffled cards.
Tunnels open silently in the landscape
triggered by location sentinels like boulders
left behind by receding glaciers
or like animals long buried in the Burgess Shale
whose distorted remains we ponder
trying to guess their living contours
tunnels of Memory darkened now
but for shards of light
glittering, sharp enough to attract a glance
a rusty fish hook bit reflexively by a passing thought
Intentions are the final mystery
we find ourselves moving before deciding to
as we are constant motion and decision
with or without awareness whose mirrorings
each arising superfluous, contingent, random
until becoming past and therefore necessary.
Did we come to be reminded
of what lies frozen in forms like Stonehenge
a calculator of future eclipses?
the sun mounting, the moon receiving
and for no-time there is nothing,
neither light nor dark
before the universe returns reborn