Lafayette Wattles

IN THE STILLNESS OF THE FROG POND

I stop the shutter, turn the camera off.

Trying to zoom left too much blurred world,
too much lost between lenses, gone
somewhere in that black cylinder.

I stop in this bowl of blowing reeds,
this soft, soaked, so-what place
with it's many-eyed skin, as a bullfrog
throats the sky, and the world opens up,
the calm, quiet so full of sound.

Like the smack of lips tasting sweetness,
silent spheres breaking, air returning to air.

And there, two bright amber gems,
two black-eyed blossoms, two unblinking
bulbs, take me in. And, there, a face, a head,
another face, and another, half-emerged,
like seekers atop the great forest
of the pond, perched on water boughs,
looking out, so much looking out.

Recipient of a Ucross Fellowship, twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated to Best New Poets, and twice selected to Best of the Net, Lafayette Wattles didn't actually read his first poem, play, or novel outside a classroom setting until he was twenty-six-years old. He's been hooked ever since, though it took him well over another decade before he started sharing his own words, some of which have appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, Blood Orange Review, Cicada, Inkwell, Juked, Plainspoke, and others.