From the Fishouse

first something about the shoes wouldn’t be right.
The whole thing started with sunrise, getting there,
a broken fog sifting birch limbs, an owl tucked, full of shrews,
with floating a pontoon down the Pactolus to shoot mallards,

when a pair of legs rose stark beside a half-built beaver dam.
The toes were grey and nailless.

I was scraping along the brackish flats, looking for something to shove off of,
and nudged the white-haired boy from beneath the branches,
his ears clogged with silt. The shoes were found a while later, by then

the hollow in me having filled up and left, leaving what?
Laces untied, sitting on the bank beside some cypress roots.