GRANT CLAUSER

FALL ISSUE #10 POET

Grant Clauser’s sixth poetry book, Temporary Shelters, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals. He’s an editor for a news media company and teaches poetry at Rosemont College.

POHOPOCO

The reasonable pace of a trout stream

is a trick. How two currents meet

before a boulder to become three.

The way caddis unfurl like smoke

on the water’s olive meniscus.

You could get used to this.

Calculating wind. Minding your mend,

and then the years go by.

Your kids grown and moving

away from you. One war or another

begins and ends, begins again.

But the water keeps flowing.

Caddis flies sleep in their cases,

forming new wings in the dark.

You’re good at this at last.

It’s the arrogance of slipping by

unnoticed by gods and devils

that gets you. The world catches up

like a crack in the dam that held

its piece of the firmament so long

you forgot it was there.