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