David Crews

Circadian Rhythm

After I remembered how he held his tea, gazed out

the window and I said how the leaves fall

litter the forest and he said perhaps more

dead pines at water’s edge or

dark poplars at night opening to full moonlight 

the nightjar bracing the wind on the branch, just the nightjar

and the dirt as it freezes, hardens, so the moles go

deeper and the whitetails hungrier.  Say it again, when will that black

bear find this trail and still before the last hundred years we shot

almost every one in these woods. 

So then, it is the water carving its history into the mountain

but what if I want the mountain.  You cannot

have the mountain or the barreds in the valleys

below it,  even when the moose come to drink that moment

is theirs just the same.  What’s the name of the fireweed

in the moose’s mouth or the sound of late winter fog breaking

into flocks of honking geese and that’s when he said

what then about poetry.

This poem and painting were first exhibited together in April 2018 at NorthWind Fine Arts in Saranac Lake, NY for the gallery’s annual National Poetry Month Celebration. “Circadian Rhythm” was also published in a limited edition chapboook Circadian Rhythm (Paulinskill Poetry Project, 2014) as well as North Country Public Radio (2021)