Counting the Days

I pass the time

by counting how many ponds

I pass in my days.

The black birds

with red shoulders

flit along the already tall reeds.

I am speckled with bugs.

I am a bug eater.

There is a dead animal

that reminds me of other dead animals,

a pregnant opossum’s teats.

I carry heavy things,

which is why I eat so much,

because I need to carry heavy things.

I covered her with sawdust to hide the smell.

It was a shallow grave on the side of the road

near where I once found a broken guitar pedal,

like a fractured manna from heaven.

I could not lift her in the shovel.

Not easily.

A shovel is an awkward tool with a heavy object.

Ducks hiding their heads under water like ostriches.

They are making faces at the mud and tree roots.

A pond is like a relic,

something that remains after everything else is gone.

A glacial footprint.

A logger’s impasse.

That is one day.

Day one of many.

Leverett Pond

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