Poetry

On the road to New Paltz
we stuff our mouths
with sandwiches from the deli
that seconds as a drum shop,
laugh hard, drink up
the wild air
that rushes in from 287
and takes our breath away.

An orange carp was stuck in the ice. It had been there for days — nicked by skates and pecked apart by crows until its scales had scattered like the particles of an exploded star or the essence that envelops a marigold. I remember thinking of the other fish swimming beneath the ice, how the carp’s diminishing shadow must trouble and comfort them both.