Poems by Richard Jordan
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Ardea Alba
by Richard Jordan
From Canary Summer 2014
Richard lives in the Nashoba Valley in Eastern Massachusetts not far from the Nashua and Squannacook Rivers
Below the factory
that used to make
the river bleed
indigo and sienna,
I crouched beside
a wooden bridge
in morning light
to watch an egret
work the reeds.
Sleek & blinding
white, a specter
I believed come back
to show me something,
she took a cautious step,
froze then slowly stretched
her neck. A pickup, passing,
shook the bridge, jarred
me away & when I looked
again, she'd already spread her wings,
a sunfish sliding down her slender beak.
© Richard Jordan
Exit 37B
by Richard Jordan
From Canary Fall 2014
The house stood near a widening of the creek.
It was gray, small, maybe fifty feet back
from the bulrush bed where pearl dace glittered
when the sun climbed high. A freeway overpass
now casts its shadow across that place. The bank
is choked with loosestrife. But I knew a woman
who lived there twenty years ago. I trimmed
her forsythia, planted peas & later worked
my line along a riffle on a day
when brook trout broke the surface at the suggestion
of a damselfly. We breaded the pink fillets:
cornmeal, salt, a drizzle or two of ale
& they tasted delicious, out there in the open.
Like spring, we thought, like nothing you could buy.
© Richard Jordan
Near Walden
by Richard Jordan
From Canary Spring 2015
Clouds of mayflies
hover above a quiet pool.
Shadbush spices the air.
White petals swirl
& flow toward the falls.
Still nothing breaks the surface.
No tug that means a fish
is on the line.
Upstream a solitary swan
holds motionless near the reeds
like a shadowed question mark.
© Richard Jordan