Poems by David Crews

Across the Lake

by David Crews

From Canary Summer 2018

David lives in the mountains and mixed deciduous forests of northwestern New Jersey, near where the Appalachian ridge will often frame a sunset or serve as a migration route for a great number of bird species.

Photo by Heather Wolf

If I remember the lake yesterday, the tanager

deep in the woods, it feels like a memory

lost in a series of new ones, each singular event simply

a tanager in a tree. And then there are only trees, a huge
blue sky.

Say it is not gone; I cannot find a tanager. It is only gone

when you are looking for it. How the day passes

more brief than the one that came before, when a late
evening chill

spills down your neck, the way the forest goes quiet. I want

to tell you that tanager will always remain a scarlet flutter

in the high canopy, will beckon you to see in a rush of color

the fleeting moment, your day just another day

across the lake. And the tanager, do not try

and take it with you, but listen instead to this song. (He pulls

her close, a hand in her hair.) This talk of tanagers stirs

your thoughts, your eyes tell me so. It is here at the lake

where you feel most alive. Tell me you love me, and this moment

will be ours, will fill with our living. When you wake

in the morning I am the song in your resting hair, the softness

of your mouth, and my touch

tells you so. The tanager across the lake you will never hold

inside your delicate hands, how to hold so much color.

But we are here now, and the lake is here, the tanager

here. We should only ask for so much.

Previously published in Bird's Thumb, June 2017