A bright chestnut-brown river otter
gracefully arches his shiny back
to run across the street and into
a nearby swamp unseen by most;
while a group of sand hill cranes
stare at us from a cypress grove
like creatures from prehistoric times.
Then a baby alligator swims ashore
to sun himself along a muddy bank
not far from bull frogs who suddenly
leap away from a landing snowy egret.
—
Richard F. Fleck, now 88, has published a number of collections over the years, the first being Palms, Peaks and Prairies, 1967 and the most recent being Bamboo in the Sun: Poems of Japan, 2020. His many books include A Colorado River Reader, 2000, Desert Rims to Mountains High, 2013, and Henry Thoreau and John Muir among the Native Americans, 2016. He is a retired professor of American literature and Native American Studies at the University of Wyoming with visiting appointments at Osaka University, Japan and the University of Bologna, Italy.
