Dina E. Cox
 

Water Music, a Requiem

nothing
but sunshine and shadow
the music
of water rushing
between sodden banks

the smell
of earth everywhere
straining
towards the morning sun
towards the redwing's song

over there
sunlight has found
the muscovy
a mute sentinel awaiting
the return of its mate

last year
some ignorant person
stole the female,
the song he waits to hear
tacet   tacet   tacet

I too wait
hoping against hope
against knowing
feeling the pulse of absence
the muscovy still, resolute

in a hurry to leave
the stream crescendos
past fallen trees, past
a dark duck keeping watch
its shape sculpted by grief

Dina E. Cox is a poet and musician living in Ontario, Canada. Her poetry has been published in several print anthologies and periodicals, online in Modern English Tanka and Simply Haiku, and most recently in Ash Moon Anthology from Modern English Tanka Press. Dina won the Betty Drevniok Award 2000 for haiku, and received Honourable Mention in it in 2005. She is currently working on a manuscript of her longer poetry.

Copyright 2008: Simply Haiku