You Said I Didn’t Like Religion

“Monon Shop 3” by Molly Phalan

Sterling Mountain’s bottom lip,
a pond with brook trout frog
croaks and short alpine balsam fir,
blends the southern deciduous
and northern boreal forests.
Deadwood lines the banks,
a notch left over from the collision
of the Canadian Shield with South
America and West Africa once buried
with volcanic ash, scraped clean
by the Laurentide Ice sheet. Dragonflies
hover around my feet on the pebbled shore
3,000 feet high. The water closest
to the sky in the state. My little prayers
of casts out into the dark blue water,
what I imagine my eyes look like
with the first glance of the day,
inhale exhale slow strips of line
will it reach? will it land?
sometimes a halt and a play and a dance
sometimes nothing.

Michael Garrigan writes and teaches along the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. His essays and poetry have appeared in publications such as Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Wayfarer, The Drake Magazine, Hawk & Handsaw, Sky Island Journal, and Barren Magazine. His first chapbook, What I Know [How to Do], is available from Finishing Line Press. and his first full-length collection, Robbing the Pillars, will be published by Homebound Publications next summer. You can find more of his writing at www.mgarrigan.com.