Notes on Falling Water

Long line of aluminum cattle cars thumping

slowly over the trestle

over the river running

deep and heavy,

reaching into the trees; broken wood

caught in jagged snares, a cracked salmon lure

in the branches on an island

hooks deep in the muck

accumulating as water flows—months

of high water moving debris

downstream—the white and red tarp

hangs drowning like a body, fat and dumb

in cold current backed against concrete

bridge footing midstream;

the surge among the branches on the bank,

a man living in the brush is staring forward,

a moment later someone plays a guitar,

barefoot, in the muddy fringe of reeds

near caved-in shoreline—the river runs deep

but not hard—boats glide against it,

ducks paddle in the slack

nosing through enormous drifts of seed--

the geese are paired and isolated, herding

down-covered goslings along to feed

on the land as it emerges out of water,

the grass seed and stubble that remain

on sandy banks, where people have left

shopping carts upended and empty, far

from home aisles, sinking into landscape

that accepts infinite lost items, and items

discarded in haste, and scraps of white film that snatch

out of each point on a hundred miles

of flooded riverbank—a flavorless plastic crop

left after water drops—blue tarps corroded by water

and earth, torn and half-sunk, twisted and mute,

plastic bottles and soda cans and empty forty ounce

beer bottles that have filled half with the liquid earth,

half with murky water, and lie on the

soft waterline: under water yesterday,

likely to be dry tomorrow.

#river #goslings