Arrival

returning words, Williams Island, late summer.

As wind withdraws in dying light,
we fold our wings post fledgling flight
and perched, gaze perspicaciously
at ruffled clouds here gathering.

The evening swells with silence cleft
by rheumy notes on insects' breath.
Our feathered burdens of the day,
let darkness fold and tuck away.

The stars adorn their skyward rim
like a burnished diadem
and as moth caught in a web
the moon flutters on a rippled bed.

Anon a pacifying rain
relieves the day's expectant strain.
While nightjars spin a cryptic song,
the river ambles humbly on.

Our antiquated island host -
a shape-shifting, alluvial ghost -
rests now elongate in her pose
between the banks, beneath the crows.

A year investigating sky
ended as the evening died
and hands recalloused in the toil
of an old, familiar soil.

Ferried to this watery loft
adrift with caddisflies and moths
I gently land the fugal glide
and slumber on the other side.