Beavers in the Wild
Stephen Barile
​
​Darkness lifts in a slow and deliberate way,
The new day is enlivened, and the river
Lumbers down its natural inclination,
Along to the sea.
A beaver in the wild
Plows the glass surface like a tug-boat,
Then graciously disappears
From this world.
Above, the swallows gather in flight.
On the island with Sudan grass,
A frozen-in-place doe
Watches as the canoe drifts by.
Not a half-mile from a four-lane road,
The beaver are busy
Always swimming forward,
Carrying their building supplies.
Large head and cupped ears is all that shows,
As the canoe follows the beaver.
Man stay away:
Splashes a warning with its large flat tail,
Disappears again near the willow sandbar,
Threads of the wake reach us
As tiny ripples.
Turkey vultures in the Eucalyptus trees
Watch, as the idle morning passes by.
Photo Courtesy of Unsplash
Lost Lake
Stephen Barile
​
Lost Lake is a misnomer
for borrow-pit
of sand and gravel
on the San Joaquin River.
Where workers blasted bedrock,
gradated it, carried it away
to build a dam, to stop the river
a mile upstream.
For the purpose of storing water
from the whole of its nature,
and sending it away
to farmers
not even of the watershed.
According to the hermetic tradition,
the river flows from the gods
and at its beginnings,
life came from the river.
​
Be warned.
The river has no equal
in destructive power,
that which is hard and strong.
​
The river tries its hardest
to prove god exists.
​
Our beloved is doing only good
​
—if a dam is raised,
the river stops—
​
the salmon have no way to return
to their birthright
or to place to die.
​
The dam has the guts
of the layer of rock from the river,
it leaves a large hole
on nature's path
shaped through the eons.
​
Photo Courtesy of Unsplash
Morning
Stephen Barile
​
Sunrise replaces painted darkness,
A reminder of the glories of light
We launch and paddle the canoe
On the San Joaquin River, at daybreak
Snowy egrets overhead inaugurate
A day of unlimited possibilities.
Curtains rise from the Sycamore trees,
Illuminate rush grass on the banks,
Shining red wild black raspberries,
A bevy of quail, mother and her young.
With ray of light, the day moves forward,
The placid surface of the river transforms,
Gray to green glass, a moss-covered bottom
Revealed with a quality of transparency
Natives who net-fished the shore venerated.
There are flashes of the darting fish
Fleeing for their lives from the presence
Of a colossal green canoe, or the oar strokes
Breaking the surface into small eddies,
Leaving behind a whirling vortex.
Chill of night is replaced by sunlight,
Warm air: fly activity increases, swarms meet
Their demise at riffles of the falling river;
Oxygen-rich water where rainbow trout leap
And devour the insects whose sole purpose:
​
A meal for morning-feeding bottom fish.
Some birds say, busily chattering, flying by,
“This is it. This is it.”
The river goes on, as we impose
Our being on the river and natural order.
A moving river is authentic peace.
This morning, a meditation
Of where we live, and our time to come.
Native spirits stand with the trees
Against rulers of darkness in this world.
Photo Courtesy of Unsplash
Author bio: Stephen Barile is an award-winning poet from Fresno, California, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. He attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. His poems have been anthologized, and published in numerous journals, both print and on-line. He taught writing at Madera College, and CSU Fresno.