Crossing Hart Creek
        after “Shallow Creek,” a painting by Thomas Hart Benton

The boy dips his head—a gesture
familiar to him because of church,
or rather the gesture of bending to pray
is familiar to him because of this:
the business of crossing a creek
after rain. He leans forward
to watch the blurry glow of his feet
through the murk, and to catch
the hem of his trousers, lift them
from the water as he works his way
from shore to shore and who
knows why. On the other side,
a dead tree, dead so long
its bark scaled off leaving its
white core, branches shaped
like a wishbone. Also a rock,
some brush, and the task of turning
back to cross again in a few minutes,
half an hour at most since all
there is really is a view of the place
he left and is about to return to.