Waterfalls

We heard but never saw
the rush of the woodland stream
over an outcrop of limestone.
The stream marked the boundary
between our land above the bluffs
and the swatch for the state highway
the county maintained.
Below the bluffs,
farms covered the bottom.
Beyond that was the river.

Heavy weekend rains flooded the road.
We couldn’t drive to Sunday mass
so we walked the sodden woods.
The tree trunks rose as columns
supporting the vaulted ceilings of branches.
Nature acted as our Holy Ghost.

Most of the year, the stream was a trickle.
The water table had fallen that low.
In the summer, sections sunk into mud,
more a swamp than a moving body
of water. But today, the skies
still dark, half gray, the first
of the sun faded, a real stream
flowed below our home.

If you remember, you said
we should find the pool
that formed after storms.
It was summer, and warm,
and we could soak our feet
in the cool water and watch
tiny fish nibble at our toes.

It was already hot and I wavered,
but you wend uphill without me.
I watched you until I knew
you would not turn back.
We could go together,
or alone, in different ways.

On our way to that very spot,
you heard it first, or I did,
that low rumble, almost a hum,
of the waterfall, an echo, of a whisper,
as if some silvan god,
or nymph, tried to advise us to,
maybe to warn us not, go deeper.

Still, we went, deeper, into the trees.
You’d think the waterfall easy
to find: just follow the stream up
the incline. But the more we climbed,
the more distinct, yet distant,
the sound became. By now, the sun
hung straight over the woods.
We waded through air more like water,
as if we were sea bottom explorers
searching for merchant wrecks
or lost ancient cities.

You paused and wiped the sweat
from your brow. I sat on a rotting log.
Together, we looked upward, to the sun
reaching through the leaves.
Dappled shadows danced across the ground.
Without a word, you turned back.
I followed. At the gravel drive
that led to the house, I said,
“Too bad we never saw the waterfall.”
“We know what waterfalls are,”
you said. “We tried,” I added.
“Satisfaction is in the trying.”
You hmphed as you opened
the kitchen door. “I prefer
fantasy to struggle.” The words
trickled off your tongue, as if
gravity forced them out.
You began to unlace
your mud-entombed boots. 

Salvage

Captain Eades walked the murky river bottom
in a pitched whiskey barrel weighted with lead.

A thin rubber tube brought air from above.
Hand over hand, he groped his way

through the mud until his fingers hooked
a balustrade, or fetter links, or jagged edges

of a boiler’s burst copper plates.
He’d clasp a chain and haul the chattel up.

Returned to the sun, he laid like a corpse.
on the deck of the boat. His body ached. He labored

for breath. He grew sleepy. And still he searched
for wrecks.  When a boy, his family landed

on the cobblestone wharf. The ship caught fire.
Everything they owned sank. Within years,

his father escaped upriver. The family lived
in poverty. By thirty, Eades made a fortune.

He waged war against the river all his life.
I, too, dived the wrecks, hidden in darkness.

When I was a boy, we lived on a raft
of American dreams and union paychecks.

We powered our delusions with cords of bones.
Sweat and tears released from the gas pipe.

We felt our gears slips. The current proved
too strong. The river, like all sleeping gods, devours

it young. When we sank, my father lost
his health, then his ambition. My mother’s

body dissolved on laundromat floors
and doctor’s waiting rooms. My brother,

too young to know, feared why
gifts were so few. I threw my goods

overboard and swam for the feral bank.
We stood wet and cold and penniless

along the landing. My father fell to bed.
My mother, to work, My brother, to his machines.

And I, to words, my salvage, the ruined hulk
hidden below the waves. I’ve dived deep.

Lightless, I groped water-logged photo albums,
cribs crusted in sludge, tract homes smeared

with the soot from mills, cars driven to rust,
unused food stamps, bonuses, like deferred happiness,

and bodies, like ghosts, but not, of what
might have been, deluged dreams.

I let them recede. No underwriter desired
to pay me gold to haul this junk to light.

Some things are best left unclaimed, sunken
in the sands of time. Let some future

treasure hunter test his worth against the current.
I turn my back on wealth. I am poor in things.