Too Simple

Collapsed in the forest a mile

from water deep enough to float it

a boat splays in a bed of leaves.

Given this frank dereliction

Rimbaud might have prophesied

this failure of the romantic quest.

And shocked by his naïve outlook

Shelley’s hero would have drowned

in a stream barely deep enough

for wading. The rotting planks

look soft as sponge cake. Hard

to believe this craft ever buoyed

pairs of duck hunters in autumn

when the flyways crackled with game.

Now a bustle of insects claims

the dark beneath the hulk. A rasp

of phoebe’s the only birdsong

in this sadly depleted season.

I want this boat to drift again

among the lilies of Noone Pond.

I want some brazen young hero

to resurrect and deploy it

where the current stalls and last year’s

lone drowned deer has disappeared

with the breakup and exit of ice.

But already it’s more forest,

more wood decay assuming

a certain organic perspective

with which I shouldn’t interfere.

Even snapping a photo hurts

the symmetry of the scene

because I can’t plant myself

at an angle shallow enough

to catch the complete surrender

of matter to matter: a moment

too simple for art to prolong.