Elegy for the River by Philip Kolin

The river is never random.

It is history’s ledger, scribbling
the obituary of reeds and moss,

the thinning of birch and brake,
receding marshes,

the invasion of rigs—
spills, slime traps, smoke.

Once the river conducted a symphony
of painters: red-winged blackbirds,

blue streaked herons, yellow warblers,
egrets as white as clouds.

But their colors leached
as they thrashed, wailed, and lunged for

scraps of oxygen
in the suffocating air.

There are no feathers today to take home
for reliquary boxes.

Silvered rain used to propagate the river
multiplying luminous dawns, silky dusks.

Once the incarnation of time, the river
has no more seasons to mark.

Now the river is on a journey to
emptiness,

snaking through a desert of owls and cactus,
the moon, a forsaken memory.

From: https://deltapoetryreview.com/v2i4-philip-kolin.html

Date: 2020

By: Philip Kolin (1945- )

Tags: 2020, elegy for the river, philip kolin, poetry, the river is never random