Lin Geary: FROM PINEHURST LAKE

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Here I am where you are not, where you can no longer walk this path around the half-frozen lake. The clear sky behind bare white birch reminds me, I have no plans for the day. But here I am, this deep, this far, and buds about to happen. So I have picked up two spruce cones, one with seeds still hanging on. And here is a shapely brown oak leaf, not quite perfect, but beautiful in my hand. Further along, a milkweed pod curls down, then up, revealing silky white fluff, its seeds in tight array, quite untouched. Then some strange pod from an unknown tree, more like a half-pod, lies open with its row of black peas, tiny obsidian pearls. It has just turned April, so dusty and fragile.

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the gander tidies
his tail-feathers first—
open water close to shore

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by Lin Geary
Paris, Ontario, Canada