Two Hearted River
eyes like ravens over road kill
fingers flashing in reeling zebcos
the fishermen can’t grasp
that some come for
the water itself, tannin-red
near shore but so clearly a black mirror
where no face appears—
or for lichen-rotted balsam firs
lying like corpses across the flow stacked
with flotsam & foam, feathers
& bones, the fallen gathered
to spin in currents siphoned
& spat down where the portagers put in
with a quiet rush
as cranes hang almost still in the turning
sky above—yet
even the heart
cannot fathom what stillness
rests in this plunge, why men
sing together like choirboys &
stop the gunnel rush &
lay the paddles down in the
whipping breeze where scarred pines bend
thru storm & sigh & rainbow’s end—
nor is it clear what draws one to
the mouth even as the last ice flows frozen
in winter’s roaring surge break free
in great chunks, leaving
the churned sand of November’s waves
again among agates below—
even the dramas of rescue at sea,
the poignancy of a captain’s last
transmission, retold around
a kitchen stove in Paradise or Mackinac
by old salts now retired
to muse thru waning years
with stormy Mondays & the names of the dead
cannot pierce thru this water
to the lost bottom
or read the runes in the lights of the waves.
—David Cope (from my book, The Invisible Keys: New and Selected Poems. Madison, Wi.: Ghost Pony Press, 2018.)