They are precious,
our children, jabbing their oak sticks
into rich muck
rimming the edge of Lake Johnson.
They are hoping
to stir something up, something wild,
something that rears
awake, shimmers, then slips away
like a specter,
like the blue heron they’ve disturbed,
flapping, flapping
its dinosaur wings toward cover.
This poem first appeared in Lake Johnson Park’s Interpretive Poetry Trail.
—
John Hoppenthaler’s books of poetry are Night Wing Over Metropolitan Area, Domestic Garden, Anticipate the Coming Reservoir, and Lives of Water, all with Carnegie Mellon UP. His poetry and essays appear in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Magazine, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Blackbird, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals, anthologies, and textbooks. He is a Professor of English at East Carolina University.
