across the shockingly-low late-october flow

across the shockingly-low late-october flow of the columbia river at night,

the red and yellow and white lights of the large houses and residential streets

of east wenatchee over there — a slow flashing nasa ground control console —

cast long smeared reflections that reveal the current’s many crescents.

but what is illuminated on the surface, of course, has little to do with truth

or at least with the impactful extent of things out there and deep inside us too,

thus the nighttime view here does not include badger mountain’s unlit foothills

that loom over the city during the day, nor do my poems show the same of me.