Hitch by Derek Sheffield

this ceaseless going you
follow when you
follow a stream

back into the hills
purls and moils
wrinkles into flats its

glassy aim
breaking to re-
shape every slope it is
bound to flow

and crumple each
try to make sense
of whirl and glint
and hold it

what’s this
gliding your way
on that lit skin
but a white dab
of a day moth stuck up-
side down, wings full spread
and legs like sutures

crookedly struggling
and you who have
seen this many times
this time are grabbing
for a stick

to reach with
and miss and miss
again and stumble-
jog to try once no
twice more before you

lift it dripping
into the air
even as you catch
a glimpse of yourself

in the streaming sheen
holding a bite-
sized hitch in earth’s weft

for you do not stop
your dimpled twin
from swiping it
onto your finger
and peering into

the pinpricked black
of its globed eyes
which must see you
multitudinously

the you who has killed
and eaten and licked
his greasy fingers the you
who has hurt others
and born grudges
and the you who will again
and this one

who walks upstream
to the tallest pine tree in sight
to divert a little life
for once at least this one
onto the bark where it crawls
wing-shivered into one
of the many furrows

puzzling its way up
past how many flakes
and branches breaking
how many rays of light
and how many needles
flaring all the way up

to where a wisp of cloud
in the whole blue sky
floats

.

.

.

Derek Sheffield’s collection of poetry, Through the Second Skin (Orchises, 2013), was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. His poems have also appeared in The Southern Review, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, AGNI, and The Georgia Review, and were given special mention in the Puschart Prize Anthology. Winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee, he has received fellowships from Artist Trust and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. He lives with his family on the east slopes of the Cascades in Washington State and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org.