Catskill, Looking East
Rip Van Winkle reaches his cold iron hand
over the stone-gray river
to pluck me like clover
from uneasy dreams
Under opal clouds
and peachskin sunrise
he hoists me up and over
salt-rimed snow
chipped and racing river ice
rough red corners of forgotten bricks
and the streams of people
eddying, spinning,
breaking on their own unknowable rocks.
If I slept like him
slipped away, name and body
into the green-gray mountains,
What would pass me by and over?
What new world would spring up under my feet?
What would remain to know me
if not these glacier-scraped hills
their gray lakebed peaks
and cold, strange thunder?
Six-Minute Winter Under the Eclipse
I stopped at the edge of the pines
windows open, engine off
alone
a crow pulled at roadkill on the other side of the asphalt
sumac berry-red streamers of an ex-raccoon
dangling from his beak
he turned his head to watch me
first from one eye
and then the other
A robin sang her falling-water song somewhere in the trees
and wind off the mountain rustled through the needles
scratching the dried sweat on the back of my neck
I watched the clock
and then the sky
I felt it first in a cooling, a quieting, a graying of the light
and all of us small things in the forest held our breath
when the shadow fell, the wings
of some bird of prey
a tidal wave, a blink
There were no clouds to hide behind
as silver waves ran over my arms
and shivering crescent moons hit the ground like hail
the shadows welled up
from under the roots and rocks
pooling in the culvert
I have plenty of practice
not looking things in the eye
but I did glance up
to see if it could see me
and I saw all the stars there are
staring back.
Teddy Ezinga was born in Chatham and has lived in the mountains and valleys Columbia County for most of their life. They now live in Hudson and have worked at the Hudson Area Library for the last seven years.