Among the Water Lilies

1
A crane tips her delicate beak down
down among the water lilies. Green
pads sport yellow white pink buds
like tea-time confections.

And blossoms unfolded.
Lotus morsels that offer sweet peace
to the crane among them
and the frogs minnows crayfish

she entertains while they all
sleep their idyllic way into her warm gullet.
The crane lifts the shine of fine beak
from out the first dream: lotus Eden.

She raises her neck high
to reach even above the high summer cattails
and strains her iron gray loop of neck

2
to crane immense girders and bales of rebar

lordly above the uncontrolled slather
of draining nature, green yellow white pink.
Adjusts to the right angle of monument aborning,
capital perfection of human genius.

3
Motored along by the refined primordium,
steered by the steady arm of public policy,

she lifts incendiary iron bars like ignorant keys
into a judgment of electric sky.

Richard Fenton Sederstrom was raised and lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and the North Woods of Minnesota. Sederstrom is the author of eight books of poetry, his latest book, The Dun Book, published by Jackpine Writers' Bloc, was released last fall. Read other articles by Richard Fenton.