Daybreak alights with kindling―
a first smolder of clouds
and wrathful glow
sparks the tree line to color.

Lake and sky become blue again
            waves polished to a tympani luster.
Trout rise into mayfly flutter
            as the dusty mantle of night wears thin,
                        wisping away beginning's need.

Unsettled, as any sempiternal oath is
            (when it is found corrigible)
Something must give sway
            (as it does for mice in grain
                        or persons walking sand)
Something that whispers.
            de muto.

Outside of
            the buoyant marks
                        (here it is safe)
Silt replaces sand, dark currents,
            a well of confinement.
                        (we don't like standing on a yielding frame)

Darters, parings from the moon
            litter the sunlit water,
                        at wading depth
Where toddlers
            (looking backward, often, for approval)
Splotch the surface with an open palms
            (there is laughter in this splash)

Arc of hair
           a sepal drawn
                        to close
when afternoons turn chill.

Lake breezes take away
            small talk,
                        (whispers too sacred to speak.)

Your hand is cold:
this day creation
is finished.

Gary is a data scientist doing value-added computing. He received a B.A. in philosophy from UWM, taking many analytic courses taught by the Milwaukee poet emeritus Prof. John Koethe. At UWM he worked on the short-lived lit mag “The Jazz Street” and had poems, prose poems and feuilletons published in the (then) Crazy Shepard, as well as various other small Midwest mags. The combination of logic and ethics led to graduate work at Colorado State in Applied Ethics. After decades of doing data analysis and programming for good causes, his interest in grass roots literature has been renewed.