Open Water

Open Water

for Cindy  

Your migratory route winds

like the loud brown crowd of geese

that settles on the black water

filling in with cattails, drowned root-balls,

wild rice, the ones always feeding

and never seeming to leave. Always

open water. The vein of Black River,

that life-line you trace, palm to steering wheel,

circling firetrails, sliding out,

turning back upon old, rutted tracks,

learning the script of a homing will,

of becoming your own wild white bird

that startles with its spearing neck

a quicksilver knot of minnows,

conspicuous in the shallows like a birch

de-leafed after that first hard autumn wind.

In the storm, you remain.

Tannin-stained. You revolve around pain

fingering the cold whorl, avoiding at first,

a habitual getting-to-know later – it stays

with you for as long as birds have wings,

which is to say, we recognize their coming

beyond the thick spruce and hidden grouse,

before their black bills part the morning fog,

when their pursuit of halo and snail

is a constant ache in your bones, playing you,

plucking tendons like lily cords,

a cello water-song.

Tar-necked and wise, they flock

to the center of the depths

where the current never slackens

under ice, the only swirling place

the dark notes know as home.

 – Kristin Berger

 

(first published by Elegant Thorn Review at http://polysemy.org/elegantthorn )

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY-TIDE, CINDY!