a Golden Shovel after Carl Sandburg’s “River Roads”
A day that starts grey, dark, shrugging off dawn, as though it let
the blanket of night slip from its shoulders reluctantly. The
sky brightens as sun fights from behind clouds, dispelling dark.
Its low wintry light is a hot caress through the window, pools
of water form where water condenses, from breaths we hold
and release, this silent act enough for now. Outside, the
air’s damp, misty, the ground sodden with rain. Airborne birds
scull along through the droplets, oblivious, or rootle and dig in
the newly yielding soil, its clay no longer baked brittle to a
biscuit-like crisp. A few months ago this was a looking-glass
world, all heat, glare, arid. Trees and grasses wilted and
withered under the otherwhere sun, leaving us wondering if
we’d ever see temperate times again. Today, approaching the
last days of December, we’ve had more extremes. Waters pool
in patches usually untroubled by puddles, and summer wishes
for rain have been met with overabundance. The river must let
itself swell, breaching banks, brown brackish waters soupy; it
surges along as the geese, mallards and young swans shiver
on the banks as it passes. A few paddle furiously upstream to
the small landing, now under inches of water, to stand on the
submerged boards, water lapping avian ankles. Gulls, a blur
of bodies which form into a mass of mocking cries, the sign of
changing times—they’re so far upstream, the distant coast many
miles to the west. Now common among our waterfowl, wings
carry huge flocks with strong sharp beaks and cruel-eyed old
stares full of ancient menace. The birds, surface swimmers,
make sense of the river’s ravages, ride the rippled waves from
flood waters that have rolled down hillsides and off fields, an old
story carried by river waters flowing their history into these places.
–
Emily Tee (she/her) writes poetry and flash fiction. She’s recently been published online in Free Verse Revolution Lit, Gypsophila Zine, Unbroken Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and Visual Verse, and in print with Dreich Mag, Poetry Scotland and several anthologies. Emily lives in the UK.