Cedar Rapids, IA, 2008
Shook foil—that’s what a river is. Catfish hauled like bars
of iron
from a mid-town bridge,
the wire that holds them
so flexed with twisting it bleeds a mercury back
to the water
the exact length of childhood:
gradient through Butler County, Blackhawk,
Linn.
Now, early third millennium,
the Cedar rages all night from the north
(less crushed oil
than river sludge,
all the down-sloping streets’
hammering run-off).
The city,
a ruined Venice.
My mother weeps at all the gilded damage.
The ornate Paramount,
the Court House rising—white stone island
on its island
now buried, middle of the river
until the city is re-grained,
re-mapped,
fractured, grafted,
a 1937 bus ride
cut
with nickel candy, early 60’s/
cut/
my brother standing one block off the river
one week post-flood
a full head below the high water line.
If YouTube is the way we mourn,
if soundtrack, if
Creed,
then I am a boy again in a Chevy
cruising that curve
past Quaker Oats
and the factory where my father worked,
past the hospital
where I was born,
air
full of greening summer
and second-hand smoke,
the beautiful scarf
of adulthood alive in the scent of beer,
ball of tar
warm in the hand like a just-birthed heart…
Ah, Atlantis—
already I’m forgetting your raw papyrus
to be written on
dries months later
(the houses still rotting)
when I drive your streets to this ghetto-ed dirt.
