'Shifting Drama' & 'Black Creek': Two Poems by Antoni Ooto

SHIFTING DRAMA

Is this is the end of the long ice age? In the furthest

parts of the world, Antarctica

melts faster and faster while the atmosphere churns.

The cracking in the freeze thaw goes on…

a moment in the night.

The sound resonating in groans and cracks.

At last, glaciers recede into a new past.

Animals search their homes,

crawl over unfamiliar rock…

no longer dazzling

no longer safe

where future fossils record themselves

in disappearing chapters.

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BLACK CREEK

moving along like blood restless over a dam

innocent cargo of seasons where perch beds water

persistent, enduring, a drift of stubborn trails

washing through a rhythm of trees

I embrace tempers of change and long shadows as

my canoe, quick in the stirring, heads east.

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Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer. His works have been published in Burning House Press, Ginger Collect, Soft Cartel, Amethyst Review, Bangor Lit Journal, Nixes Mate Review, Pilcrow & Dagger, Red Eft Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Young Ravens Literary Review, Front Porch Review, An Upstate of Mind and Palettes & Quills. Antoni lives and works in upstate New York with his wife, writer/storyteller Judy DeCroce.