VIEW WITH CAMEOS

View with Cameos Above the calm air—immaculate, actually— a more restless, nervous air accumulates and knocks the highest limbs of the tallest trees startling birds, snarling invisible ropes of sky, I know it by the barely audible swishing sound over the rapids’ racket, which if I had my ears plugged like everyone else I’d miss, too. None of this however touches me, strolling gently the gravel paths down low by the river if by touches I mean on the skin, and if by skin we don’t include the eardrum. Little tympanum, I love what you give me in a typical day, wind I’d otherwise only know by chill or eye, birds deep in cedar. And who alert to the stink of arrival hasn’t heard a shadow? But look— this spring the standing waves— glassy-skinned, vociferous— push higher than ever into the air under the wind, into liqueous wind. The eddies gleam like rubbed shells, each with the shape of another dear friend lost or departed, carved in