Reflecting Pools
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah
By Lois Marie Harrod
What water can do, still itself and mirror—
small pools on sandstone contemplating
rock and sky. Each its own Claude mirror
returning the reaches. What is back and beyond,
too high to touch, they contain.
Perhaps you’ve known it too, in a street,
water gathering to a glass that doesn’t drop or shatter.
Consider the distance rain falls to be here—
you do not understand your existence either.
But here you are at this one time and place
and not some other elsewhere. How lucky
you didn’t die of those childhood diseases,
strep and pertussis, how lucky your children,
grandchildren too, liquid on this earth,
the wild sky turning in their eyes.
Lois Marie Harrod’s 16th and most recent collection Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in January 2016, and Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. She is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches Creative Writing part-time at The College of New Jersey. Links to her online work at www.loismarieharrod.org
Featured image by Derek Wright.
