Time is a log raft behind a smoking face.

It is a sight around the corner of a river

on a slip-and-fall summer day.

You don’t hurry when you cut

through silt and mud. The log raft follows

the cast and reel. Boomsticks know where

shirts and shoes will gather next as people

turn the fish and travel faster than the current

and slower than the wake of a felled tree.