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Sitting at a Picnic Table at the Quabbin Reservoir

from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems by Joshua Michael Stewart

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lyrics

SITTING AT A PICNIC TABLE AT THE QUABBIN RESERVOIR


Muddy bird prints on the pine-board top.
I want them to belong to eagles or hawks,
but convinced they’re of duller feathers.

I’m unschooled in avian tracks,
but read that the Chinese alphabet
was inspired by fowl feet in snow.

There’s a rustling behind a boulder
and from behind appears a ruffed grouse.
It clucks, pecks at the ground.

Shaped like a football awaiting kickoff,
it struts my way on three-pronged toes
that match the impressions on the picnic table.

I zoom-lensed skyward, scoped autumn canopy
for falcon, vulture, other birds of prey
and here in reddish and copper plumage,

the thing I tried to find in a raptor’s soar,
hops next to me on the bench
and stares up with one brown eye.

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from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems, released February 26, 2023

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Joshua Michael Stewart Massachusetts

Joshua Michael Stewart is a poet and musician living in Western Massachusetts.

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