Takes me in its teeth,
it’s a sleek wolverine
shaking off glassine beads
of the setting sun, gleaming
over the river cold and clean;
Riverine carries me in its furling current;
my soul adamantine, unchanging, always changing,
the lean walleye and muskies now follow me,
hollow seems what we leave upstream, the tangerine
sun bleeds into the deep crystalline
sky and as these Anthropocene
days slide into deep blue evening skies
scattered with constellations named for dragons and hunters and queens,
Cassiopeia awakes and takes a long look, shakes
off her mantle of sleep and demands passage to the sea,
she shall take the river now darkly unseen,
it bends at the rapids on its creaking knees
and receives the reflection of the queen, regal and fine,
along its shining black spine, long and serpentine –
Riverine!
Triumphant, we carry her mirrored gleam
all the way to Lake Michigan’s ragged seam
where jagged rocks meet waves like cream,
and reams of stories, those gloried myths of the Greeks,
meet the Midwestern shores
with scores of dreams,
dream upon
dream
upon
dream.
Halfway North 