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Creeping Water
The death scent of late autumn
spreads thick on every somber molecule of leaf and soil,
soft and damp and waiting for winter to come, in
denial of the crisp stiffness in frost-rimed grassblade;
fallen fading leaf.
She doesn’t seem to notice how, in the mornings sometimes even
the loquacious river is still and glassy, earnest folds of gray ice,
doubling in on itself in impatient wait for burbling freedom. In all
her
beauty, she doesn’t see the baleful dark-eyed stares of delicate
raven and crow,
searching for prey while the cold
has driven all the mice underground.
Through the mellifluous eyes she watches the river
churn in defiance against the crackling chill;
slower and slower until first snowfall muffles everything from ear,
the
fleeting former warmth lost to bird, to snug grass-lined burrow,
to the sharp-crying geese that follow her away to a better place,
far
from winter’s scorn
that tears at her throat with icy claws regardless.
Margit Bowler, Age 13 (2002 Finalist)
Entered individually
Clatsop, Oregon
