John Muro

Buttermilk Falls

From this bare outcropping of stone,
I watch the giddy river flee its headwaters
beneath a canopy of hardwoods and
mountain laurel before it spools in languor
and seeks to separate itself from itself
within a wide platter of basin then pauses
as if weighing life beyond the ledge,
but unable to walk itself back, it succumbs
and tumbles forth, like muffled thunder,
into the lower chasm where it cleaves
the surface, rises rudderless and presses
on in hurried torrent, singing itself south
in liquid bluster, flowing away past saplings
and the tousled underbrush, bearing vivid
fibers of moss-green stubble and tablets
of bark, softening soil and stone as it feels
its way forward, wrinkling the landscape
and staking its claim upon the earth.
The eyes can’t help but stop and settle
there – though – near the banks in the
slow drowse of foam and tea-stained
water collecting in oval eddies that
work their way towards – and then
away from – one another just the way
the water manages to gather itself
before remembering its path and
then moving on to marry with the
astonished and witless what’s-to-come.

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and, more recently, the Best of the Net Award, John Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate. He has published two volumes of poems — In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite — in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Both volumes were published by Antrim House, and both are available on Amazon and elsewhere. John’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Delmarva, River Heron, Sky Island, Valparaiso and Willawaw. Instagram: @johntmuro.