Seamus

by N.W. Hicks

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Sept. 5, 2025

The morning you were born,
the rain was scattered with sun.
It was the sort of morning you expect
breath to be seen: the first
hope of a jacket; the first chorus
of yellow leaves shaking on the branches;
the sumac and swamp maple, and the ivy
around a small stump, all going red.

By the afternoon, the rain was hardly
a memory on the asphalt, 
so I went to the water
because little blessings deserve prayers,
and the river taught me how to pray.

Seven turkey vultures sunbathed in brown grass
before they crowned a cloud. A heron
preened oily feathers on a grey stone
surrounded by smooth water. Spiders
spun the wet sun from their webs.
A stone can carry a wish in the right water:
the way the right rock from the right hands,
here, could go skipping on forever.

The river always remembers a name born in the rain;
the way the water striders keep spelling it out.

Amazing, how a pink knuckle of lady’s thumb
can hold the whole bank back: amazing,
how two little hands and one, big breath
can change the world.

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N.W. Hicks is a Connecticut-based New England poet. An alumnus of UConn and Manhattanville University, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Wild Roof Journal, River & South, Tabula Rasa, Paper Dragon, and elsewhere. He believes in water but works with dirt and dreams of becoming a river’s meander.

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