Bucket

I stood by the flooded Missouri,
a mile wide and varnished with light,
and a five-gallon white plastic bucket
floated past, riding deep in the water,
three or four gallons inside,
its wire handle leisurely sunning itself
on the rim, and I was delighted.
The water a bucket might carry
for decades, will, when requested to,
pick up the bucket and carry it on.

A Few Things in Their Places

A brick on the lid of a beehive, five tires
weighing down the tarpaper roof on a shed,
close to a hundred round thousand-pound bales
holding the prairie flat all the way out
to its edge and, next to an abandoned school,
a teeter-totter pressing the tip of a finger
on something that once happened there.

Man Wading into a Lake

He’s up to his thighs when we notice him,
fish-belly white, easing out into the water,
up and down on his toes, his fleshy arms
out wide and wing-like, fingertips brushing
invisible walls in the air as if he were
feeling his way down a hall, to a ballroom
where everyone’s playful and happy
but no one is waiting for him. The others,
all squealing and splashing each other,
draw back without thinking, making room
at their center, trailing their fingers
as if they were holding the edge of a net,
and, yes, that’s him, now slowly falling
from somewhere above, plunging down
into them, hopefully spreading his wings.