Eleven

June 24th, Franconia, New Hampshire

Sonia, Cecilia—where the mountain river

meets the brook, and Lafayette and Gale

blur in shallow confluence, and silver

minnows court you both:  With net and pail,

one of you wades beneath the branches, netting

little fish; the other dams the still

bright water, lifting stones and briefly fretting

rings in the brook.  The sun stands on the hill.

Sonia in shade, Cecilia in the sunlight

where the water—faster—nears the sluice:

Hold this eleventh hour, as one might

stop lunchtime—coming, like the end of June,

inevitable as the Angelus,

to start us down the darker slope of noon.

Deborah Warren

(c) 2000; originally printed in the Cumberland Poetry
Review.  Reprinted by permission of the author.