When in Wisconsin Where I Once Had Time

When in Wisconsin where I once had time the flyway swans came whistling to the rotten Green Bay ice and stayed, not feeding, four days, maybe five, I shouted and threw stones to see them fly. Blue herons followed, or came first. I shot a bittern’s wing off with my gun. For that my wife could cry. My neighbor’s wife mistook the spawning frogs for wood ducks nesting the white pines up on Bean Hill: I straightway set her right. Each April, on the first rainy night I lantern-hunt for salamanders where they hide, toewalking the bottom mucks and muds. I shudder at the scored skin of their sides, the deep flesh tucks. In hand, they dry. I walk in frogspawn jellies on my lawns. One time I hoped the great white birds might brake for the frog ditch and alight, but all the addled past falls in on itself, splash rings close inward on the rising stone, my gun sucks fire, the bone becomes whole bone, light narrows back on point and filament, the forest turns to sand, and only season lacking source rolls round and round, till I in my turns fall forever back clutching my stone, my gun, my light. When in Wisconsin where I once had time and spring beasts gorged my marrows and my tongue, I was not blind: the red eft clambered in my eye.