Along the Little Piney
Fingers impatient
with the buttons of a shirt,
desperate to shed
accustomed constraints,
you strip down
as if aflame,
then pause demurely
to hang your clothes
on a crown
of upturned roots.
How is it? Cold!
wading through
foam and twigs,
caught between
desire and lassitude,
having kept
apart too long.
A current wrinkles
around your legs
and the river lifts
above itself
as fog.
_________________
Devin Johnston
Mosses and Lichens
Farrar, Straus, Giroux
2019
