When the river recedes, I don't ask what tamed it,

counting from the porch

those things I thought lost: the dock in the muddy

sunlight, bobbing;

the garden, loyal to fate. I don't ask the river why

it changed its mind,

there -- then not there -- on the grass or on the bank

where last year you walked

with the daughter you were leaving, and where now

a few oxeyes

encourage her attention. Or is something else calling her?

Body alert, mind drifting. . .

This is how she moves when she doesn't know how to,

when she's troubled

and can't say it. With a wooden shovel, she digs

by the birdhouse

that's home to the floating cardinal: red in this field

of green. And there,

by the poplar branching over the river you crossed

to the other side,

she knows what she's meant to find. You showed her.

And you taught her

to trust in a thorny order, its tipsy give and take. Only

now she wishes it

less abstract, wishes that the long view time provides

might be granted her easily,

and all in one flash. Hole in her heart, where the rain

tugs away whatever it can,

stealing it to the river -- don't ask what she's doing.

River, unhook her.

-- Thomas Swiss