I’m Denise Low reading poems about rivers as part of The Radio Readers Book Club’s 2021 Fall Read Rivers – Meandering Meaning. Rivers make me meander back to some of the first poetry I ever read, like this poem about the Nile by an unnamed Egyptian, translated by Ezra Pound,
Nothing, nothing can keep me from my love
Standing on the other shore.
Not even old crocodile
There on the sandbank between us
Can keep us apart.
I go in spite of him,
I walk upon the waves,
Her love flows back across the water,
Turning waves to solid earth
For me to walk on. . . .
Rivers can be barriers or challenges or pathways, but always there is uncertainty, the unknown, like the crocodile! For me, the scary river creature is the giant alligator snapping turtle, like one I once saw on the parade grounds of Fort Larned or this one:
William S. Burroughs: His Alligator Snapper by Denise Low
An alligator snapping turtle raises
her bald hood through pond water.
She untangles her neck, reconnoiters,
heaves ashore like a jon boat.
She carries weapons—sabered beak,
back-ridges, taloned feet—
affixed to her body like Burroughs,
who always carried a derringer.
The turtle makes for the creek,
claws scoring slashes in the grass.
She sliides gently down the bank,
tilts, returns to primal mud.
The spell vanishes like an avatar’s
incarnation or last night’s squall.
The place falls silent again
but everything feels different as though
a tornado lifted away but next time
will remember the address.
And finally, here is a river poem from my most recent book Wing (Red Mountain Press), about some measures of life:
Kaw River Wings by Denise Low
My arm span is a forgotten
measure
like a cubit—
half-length of a hand.
My shoulder blades clasp
paired muscled wings.
A knotted clock ticks
one heartbeat to the next—
so many thumps to the river.
A buzzard shadow stencils fog.
It overlaps an eagle’s
black wings.
Below live the mussels
Ouachita and Pink Paper,
two thin shells for wings.
Their rosy flanges slide
through mud currents.
Rivers do run through every part of this country, and they sustain our need for beauty and change as well as life itself. This is Denise Low, author and former Kansas Poet Laureate for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.
REFERENCES
Low, Denise. “Kaw River Wings.” Wing (Santa Fe: Red Mountain Press, 2018). 13.
Low, Denise. “William S. Burroughs: His Alligator Snapper.” Casino Bestiary (Spartan Press, 2017). 11.
Pound, Ezra and Noel Stock, trans. Love Poems of Ancient Egypt. New York : New Directions, 1962. Based on literal renderings of the hieroglyphic texts into Italian by Boris de Rachewiltz, which first appeared in the volume Liriche Amorose degli Antichi Egizioni..." Milan : Vanni Scheiwiller, 1957.