As others or ourselves
let’s say—furtive, then,

inconsequent and sad—
or on the edge of thought,

perhaps, or into some
predictable meandering,

the outward accelerations
of water against its shore

dissipating into erosions,
cuts and counter-cuts,

remembered as landscape,
the convenient certainties

of an abandoned past.
Is it tree or treeline

or the massing of leaves
against the sky or color

freed from shadow or something
of color deepening against shade,

the sensible bluff that heaves
above the bluff’s presumed

insensible marl? River,
again, always enclosed

by its own turnings, its
own turnings overgrown.