old days at Sheep Camp...



The wordlessness of the slow-moving stream

told her something of her father,

his silence, not stony, but slow-moving.

Wood that lay splintered in more or less 

arm-length blocks and the excess, 

innumerably-sharded next to the pile.

Neat, like her father.  He sometimes 

held the wood,  or shaped it for pleasure, 

because not everything  is useful. 

His rougher hands in steady,  

lulling rhythm, like the neighbour boy 

she had caught by the river.  

That wordless river, and her, wordless.