Poems by Shelley Chesley

of loons and lakes

by Shelley Chesley

From Canary Spring 2022

Shelley lives in the Cascade Creek watershed north of San Francisco, among redwoods, coyotes, foxes, deer and alongside one particularly outstanding elder Japanese Maple.

you are lake launching skyward
wings keep oar beats
unfit for land
your water nature rip-
ples with runaway clues,
rife in the lusty fear of fishes

lady lake shape-shifts—frogs pulse shiny
in her palm—she
revels in shadow-savvy
flitting fish schools
suns her bottom in the shallows
of mud lazy places

but you loon you
leave her behind
laboriously, fitfully claiming sky
like old broken Willie the pond jumping plane
I’m shore bound
you make your peace with air
and haul yourself away

till May’s spring spell obliges—
you track my way again
to scrape a nest both moist and dry, you
covet that edge where liquid meets form
checkered breast rests half in water

where invisible loon mothers tune in humming
privy to the ways of lakes and loons
ready to mount their laugh-ridden opera
as lady lake laps close

© Shelley Chesley

this morning

by Shelley Chesley

From Canary Spring 2022

taken down
stunned by redwoods drunk on mist
the pacific northwest you hazard
but ‘you can’t get here from there,’ it’s

these trees, this mist
that treetop’s defiant sprig
crookedly upright, middle
finger of imperfect presence
standing in for all creation
you cannot help but love
its claim

soft diaphanous white on the move
obscures the view,
reveals it for
one… no one
i teeter on
invisible edges only in my mind
neither presence nor a b s e n c e
i’m dizzied
still, crows move in and out;
give me back my
body