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Awaiting My Brother's Pathology Report,
My Husband and I Take to the River
Laughing gulls laugh, and laugh, what they do best.
Hilarious, I guess, the afternoon sun.
They can barely contain themselves. A pageant
of cedar, Chinese tallow, more cedar.
I'm half sick
of all this beauty. Grapevines thread
the bank's bramble. An osprey repeats its pitiful call—
odd, its small cry.
Blue stands at the bow
and whips his line past a bumble bee droning
from rod to unused rod propped up against the seat.
Fish crows talk their low crow talk.
The bee buzzes
so near my head (almost touching my nape) I cringe
and break out in goose bumps.
Here's the hope:
a dried-up vine clings to whatever it can.
Still there, a wrecked boat and motor,
half submerged, left to rust. A stand of sumac,
that determined weed.
Dead stumps dot the water.
We have come here to ease through something green
and growing.
Is that a bullfrog, or alligator,
bellowing low? Out here the birds are kind
with their remarks, pickerelweed thrives
in clumps.
Full to crested over, what does the river care?
A frog jumps from the bank in its long, perfect arc.
Blue switches bait. Above us, a grackle
fusses and flits from limb to limb.
— for Gene
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