RICHLAND DOCK, 1956

 

Someone launched a boat into the current,

 

caught and delivered fish to the lab

and someone tested for beta and P-32.

Someone with flasks and test tubes tested

and re-tested to double check the rising values.

 

And someone drove to the public dock

with a clipboard and tallied species and weight.

Chatting with his neighbors, Which fish

are you keeping? How many do you eat?

 

And someone with a slide rule in a pool of light

figured and refigured the radionuclide

dose. Too high. Experimented frying up

hot whitefish. No. No. Then someone decided

 

all the numbers were wrong. Someone

from our town. Is that why we

were never told? While someone fishing—

that little boy; the teacher on Cedar Street—

 

caught his limit and never knew.

 

 

 

Southern Poetry Review 45:1

 

 

RICHLAND DOCK, 2006

 

The Columbia rolls on

through the desert,

unimpressed and unattached—

a woman who doesn’t need boys

to dance, a king’s parade

of golden carriages,

an endless line of warriors ants.

The river speaks French

in a land of inferior grammar.

The river is blue in a field of brown,

green in a field of grey,

black in a field of bronze.

The river shuns the desert.

It holds its tongue.

It saves itself for the ocean.

The river is fast, undammed,

Rapunzel’s hair let down

and won’t allow this

shrub-steppe plain to climb it.

The river won’t lend itself

to grow a tree. Look—

sagebrush flush with its banks.

No meeting, no kiss, no marriage.

Look at the tumbleweeds.

The river bathes in its glory,

the desert eats dust. The river

belongs to somewhere else.

The mighty river passes, not touching.

But not untouched.

 

 

 

Southern Poetry Review 45:1