Build yourself a pink tar-shingled shack
a wet-side complex
low-set in a sphagnum bog
maternity ward of snapping turtles

Trundle down to a warped dock
hiding in the purple of August
pickerel weed—look up
imagine drawing the changing faces
animals in the elephant clouds

Stand beneath a canopy of hemlocks
listen to a red squirrel carry-on
its mid-afternoon conversation

Sit with a book lakeside
feel the mossy shore
watch between pages
morphing appendages of tadpoles

Stare hard at an exoskeleton
a mindless dragonfly’s nymph
soulless rigor mortis
on the new-green growth
of a dockside balsam

Watch clover give a sloe gin buzz
puny petals messaging
unshaven legs of the bumblebee,
whose micro-mind is stuck
skydiving in a memory

John Fritzell lives in Appleton, WI. Employed in the financial services industry, John’s poems have appeared in Plainsongs, Bramble, and Gray’s Sporting Journal. John’s chapbook Thuribles was out from Kelsay Books in May, 2021 and was awarded first place in the 2022 WFOP annual chapbook contest.