Pathways of Moraines

Very likely, they gather in ponds around hills
They might be lonely, they might be deep,
Far and down they have to flow to arrive,
Slithering among vertiginous, uperect walls
Of glistening granite and bauxite, among broken
Trunks and thickets of branches smothered by winter,
Leaving behind the pathways of moraines,
Listening to the whisper of writhing ice.

Quietly, the celestial night rays have gathered
On the shimmering current of this forgotten
Lake, tonight, getting in line as a shifting pattern
Of chaotic order, residing in the highest orbs
That crisscross the darkened sky.

March on they do, with big strides over
The lake’s velvety, dark glass top,
They find their own reflection, peering through
The waters-turned-into-ice to reach the fathom
Of the bottom, the invisible life’s stillness
Reaching in the netherworld of the dark abyss.

Reaching for the sky but still finding the needles
Of the shredded and dissected pine-corpse, each rock,
Angled, shattered across the cracked shore—stars unlit

Glow as they did in primordial murky aeons
Over currents of rough seas and blackened
Paths swirling over desert basalt, Cassiopeia’s
Mane radiating as in Copernicus’ times, the North
Star guiding stalely every mariner’s route. Polaris
As a firm marker, its light penetrating through
Millenia, also on this lake this night, unchanged.

Them orbs up in dark sky congregate, maybe
In festive convocation, reliving their own
Myths and stories, amid mist, fog, thunder,
And cloud, the wisps of whitened winter layers
And autumn residuals. Ancestors they are
Of transformation, delicate on all the peering
Eyes of the night. Nothing do they understand.

10/18/2021