Coy

Up on the grey margins
Of the tiny, man-made
Reservoir, past mid-spring,

A single-engine plane
Droning, with some tourists,
No doubt, toward the cliffs,

The lake’s little fey waves
Let breezes play with them,
As if being a wavelet

Were just a playful thing,
A run around the pond
In the spring sort of thing,

Rather than the business
And shape of everything,
Shoreline grackle blatting,

Two geese circling to splash,
A fishing boat, a pipe
Carrying snowmelt down

From the dry winter’s last
White banks in grey mountains,
Horizontal as clouds,

A motorbike revving,
The breezes themselves, which
Have to move on, stirring

The next cloud and the next,
Swirling all the way round
The whole world, wavering.