Circles

It must have been a fish,

I really didn’t see.

It must have said,

Let there be circles -

and there were circles:

concentric circles;

circles growing ever larger;

perfect circles on the still, murky

plane of water

on the upstream side

of the Bowersock dam.

And then when the leading edges

of the circles reached the rubber

surface of the dam,

the circles bounced back into semi-circles.

And then in a few seconds more

there were no circles,

only still, murky water spread across

the exposed curvature of the planet.

I know about circles from high school,

physics and wave motions,

mathematics and measurements

in which pi factors elegantly.

What puzzles me now

has more to do with why

these circles should have caught

my notice at all.

And then upon further reflection,

that they should astonish me

so seldom.

A tall black bird –

perhaps an errant cormorant –

watching from a partly submerged rock

in the river downstream from the dam

slowly extended its wings

several times.

It did not fly.