Unwavering

Here, where wind blows upriver
fingering the water’s silks,
and willow leaves shimmer
green white green white
like eyes opening and shutting
in the sun; here, where dragonflies
skim on transparent wings
and the merganser herds 
her brood of ducklings
into an eddy; here
it is impossible not to say
the wild is tender.

Look:  caddisflies walk under water
in gem-studded sheathes.  
Needle thin fish flash between pebbles
in the shallows.  A spotted sandpiper
scrapes a nest in gravel.

And mid-winter when the river
floods, topples firs from hillsides,
jams logs against boulders, breaks
the willow’s fingerhold on cobble,
is the wild not tender?

If the sun’s gentlest touch
on a willow leaf is not love,
if the river’s hardest thrust
of water on rock is not love,
if to set down roots, wind deep
in cobble, clutch stone,
withstand flood, bend and whirl
then spring free of the water’s grasp
is not love, what is?

Look:  wind turns willow leaves
in the sun, green white green 
white green, and the caddisfly slips
from its underwater casque,
spreads four diaphanous wings,
unfolds in sunlight.