Dave Seter
     Building With Words

New Poems

SOUTH FORK YUBA RIVER
               published in The Kerf 2009
  

Sierra Nevada snowmelt pours down rock chutes,

seeking Sacramento, the delta’s flatter hydraulics.

Above Grass Valley the river stalls in whale-sized

granite bowls.  They boil like witches’ cauldrons.

Boulders caught in the turmoil measure time

being ground from granite to coarse-grained sand.

The swimmer surprised by the vortex has no time

to contemplate the laws of physics, needs the measure

of another breath.  Without it his hands, torso, veins,

might soon match the coldness of quartz coursing

through the riverbed’s skin.  Gravity part of his

belief system, he needs to shed this water like snake skin.

WINDOWS

               published in Raven Chronicles Vol. 14 No. 2 


They keep out the angular rain,

protect our dollars in banking institutions.

Through another I bet on a sorrel gray horse.

Purportedly there are more portals

than we can count: consider the windows

to a woman’s soul.  And while New York’s

office towers are routinely sealed, Parisians love

to plant window boxes, leave open

their windows even when the gates

of heaven are heavily guarded.  So what

if a few burglars crawl into our lives,

slip between the laundered sheets and stay,

pretend-snoring, refusing to be wakened?

It’s hard to quarrel with windows open,

all that bird life seeping in.  Some risks

must be taken, consider the miracle,

the window through which you were born.

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