by Robert Fillman
A century has passed since you straddled that log, delicate neck stretching to meet the creek’s surface,
snout skimming the cool water now and then. Another morning makes no difference to you. The bank all shade and mud-brush, a heaving
endless silence to anyone not stalking these woods. And then it happens. The season’s pulse grows faint.
Your tail flutters like a white flag. The half-light flattens. It’s your eye that keeps fighting almost as if the life of your gaze is leaping
toward the next hundred years, loud as a rifle shot while the earth, time itself, slowly, surely, turns—
Robert Fillman is the author of House Bird (Terrapin, 2022) and November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag, 2019). Individual poems have appeared in such journals as The Hollins Critic, Poetry East, Salamander, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Tar River Poetry. His criticism has been published by ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, CLAJ: The College Language Association Journal, and elsewhere. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Lehigh University and currently teaches at Kutztown University
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