Photo of yellow leaves clustering and piling up on the banks and tributaries of a stream otherwise surrounded by green vegetation

Considering the Case

        after a line by Stephen Dunn

It is sensible, certainly, to assert
that feelings are partly the problem.
They slide like leaves down otherwise
clear streams, tangle on the rocks,
block the flow, and like beavers dam
things up. And though this remains
a fact, when we consider the case
we are forced to admit that lakes
can be formed in this way, lowlands
converted to embrace the reflected
beauty of a blue sky, and our feelings,
we must sometimes accept, form
the foundations of new habitats
where the egrets of our imaginations
shock the dull earth with their white.

—V. P. Loggins
—found in Poetry East (Autumn 2015; No. 86)

Photo adapted from one by Ryan Lara on Unsplash