Stymied
by Allan Peterson

by the eulogies, elegies, remiges, retrices, speed bumps, 
water clocks, yields. I was stymied by the fringe 
on the large Bokara, a euglena spinning and blinking 
its orange eyespot like a double sun.
First, morning was crisp and sharp, then frayed as daylight 
aged the earth and slowed me. I was stumped by how 
a bird sees a path and flies through a tree without stopping 
while I can hardly turn left without catching on a snag.
And I could not stop replaying that lagoon in the Philippines  
where millions of jellyfish rise from the depths like dreams,
elephants swimming the Okavongo as seen from below.
Even now the wasp stings glass and I am paralyzed.

Allan Peterson is the author of All the Lavish in Common (2005 Juniper Prize) and Anonymous Or (Defined Providence Press Prize) and four chapbooks. Recent print and online appearances include: Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast,  Bat City, Sawbuck, Boston Review, and Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry. Work forthcoming in: Talking River Review, Northwest Review, Natural Bridge. 

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