Tinges of evening stain the gray sky.

Herons swing low, languidly drifting

just above the floating wave-sparkle.

At the water’s edge, cicadas rev

like a factory of sewing machines.

In the pinewood, a woodpecker leans

into a loblolly with insistent tap-bursts.

From a high porch I brood

about the riprap girdling the shore.

It is losing its grip, slipping

unhurriedly into the current that

courses for home, the salt of the sea.

I suppose we should do something

to secure the stones, to ward off

licking erosion. I suppose we should.

Yet, it seems a futile gesture,

giving the finger to time and nature,

who are sure of winning this puny contest

– our seventy-some years

up against their millions.

•••
Jeanette Willert was an Associate Professor of English Education at Canisius College and Director of the Western New York Writing Project. A recent Vice-President of the Alabama State Poetry Society, she was honored as their 2018 Poet of the Year. Her chapbook Appalachia, Amour won the Morris Chapbook Award (2017), Her poems have appeared in Goat’s Milk, WINK, Libretto, Crosswinds Poetry Journal and the 2020 Anthology of Appalachian Writers. Her first poetry book, will be published by Negative Capability Press this year.

Below the Waterfall

Jeanette Willert