Two poems by Noah Salamon

I know / the muddy water stretches on / down and down, to infinities of darkness

AT FORKED CREEK

Across the creek, far from its wiry nest
an osprey, clutching some twisted twig
wings the wet air in looping circles
bent shadow skimming tired water

but it doesn’t stop here, I know
the muddy water stretches on
down and down, to infinities of darkness
where no sound carries, to pockets
beyond the tides

                                         and even there
worn smooth and glassy
by the weight of water
the work, the work goes on

A MEDITATION

Go back before
before — always there is
a beginning. It is April

before there was
April. Galvanized sky
curving just beyond water

a first spinning place
all apple-flesh and canopy
a place before asking —

sinew and bone, he begins
taking, in his seamed hands
seine net, length by length

Noah B. Salamon is the English Department Chair at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, California.  He received his MA in English from Loyola Marymount University, where he won the Graduate Poetry Contest in 2015.  His poetry has appeared in HCE Review and Sixfold, and his poem “South River Bridge” will be published in Silver Needle Press Volume 1.  His essay “The Transformative Effect of Color in the Poetry of Tomas Tranströmer” was published on the World Literature Today blog in 2014.