What’s in that Midwestern river but miles of fallen leaves
twigs, boughs, centuries of oak-silt and cow dung
silage and corn silk, sorghum, motor oil and weed-killer
bottlecaps cattail seedheads skunk cabbage muck
gravel and cement blocks sunk deep and slick now
with water-clot, muskrat scat, decayed matter. Bones.
Stewart’s grass clippings have been long subsumed in that water.
Edna’s view of the bridge is there, but the bridge is new.
If there are eels still, then, in the brown flow: eels.
On flat summer days, reflections. Dreams the locals built up,
accreting into the usual prosperity or losses. Winters of snow.
Between those banks scum and renewal—sinking, moving.
You’ve come to sift into the flux your mother’s gritty
gray ashes, she who said she knew where she belonged—
in the slow shallow serpentine winding, she settles in.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 5.
Ann E. Michael’s most recent chapbook is Strange Ladies (Moonstone Press). Her website is www.annemichael.blog. After tutoring students in writing for 16 years at DeSales University, she’s pondering what may be next on the career horizon and hunkering down for winter in one of Pennsylvania’s many valleys.
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