Just a Little
Brandon Cook
What I will remember, I have learned, are not simply the grand moments, like June Lake seemingly split open in a silver spray of light, at sundown
But the little eddies in time, like
Standing beside the convenience store as my friend smoked in the cold, the blue boughs of shaken oaks unfolding above me, ready for winter renewal;
They would have been giants beside the lake, but were more like tired peasants, trash swept into the leaf piles at their base, their roots turned into brooms, as they clung to the bosom of the earth
The rain had wet everything, and the smoke unfolded like fog as I surveyed the ridge line across the street, the birches nearly stripped bare beneath the steady beat of autumn rain
Save that there, above me, three of four stubborn trees still pinpointed the horizon with yellow, like some artist’s brush dipped happily to remind us that
A little goes such a very long way