Tom Wayman

The creek is low
in autumn. Floating twigs,
branches, withered leaves
have piled up against
a small cottonwood log,
one end wedged against the bank,
that extends into the slow current.
Behind the barrier, the stream
is almost still.

                       This evening
a single star
is reflected on that miniature pool’s
flat surface, the light
having left its galaxy
millions of years before
to navigate space’s
unconceivably vast ocean
to arrive on water
that has flowed only
a few kilometres
down the dark mountain.

The half-moon
has not yet cleared
the valley’s eastern ridge.
Also not mirrored here,
are the myriad constellations
that will roof the night.
Below yellowing aspen and birch
along the shore,
a solitary pinpoint gleam
—migrant, exiled—
rides on this pond
that shimmers now
in a faint shifting of air.

Tom Wayman received British Columbia’s 2022 George Woodcock Award for Lifetime Achievement in the literary arts. A resident of Laguna during the 1960s, his newest collections are: in the US, Built to Take It (Lynx House P, 2014), and in Canada, Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems For a Dark Time (Harbour, 2020), He has two books forthcoming in spring 2024: a memoir, The Road to Appledore, or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place (Harbour) and a collection of poems, How Can You Live Here? (Frontenac House).