Late Fall, Running Along the River
Black walnuts punctuate both banks, straining stiffly against the cold smoke sky like forlorn roots from a forest planted upside down by conniving Nephilim, long ago. Or planted right-side up in some underworld where trees once supped on the nutrients of Earth.
Flood of ’01
We splashed past the ball field as a man in a green kayak kayaked atop its glimmering diamond, stealing third in slow-motion. A cluster of sparrows perched within the slots of the chain link fence, watching him, drying off. Then we pedaled with the current down the hill behind our house, curious where all the rain was rushing so tirelessly, and our tires sprayed the cars parked along the curb as we surged toward the creek— or what had once been the creek— what was now gushingwith twigs, tadpoles, and untold gallons of chocolate water, vomited from a foul and furious culvert. We dropped our bicycles in the grass, which was mud, and ran to the old plank bridge to feel the creek rage inches beneath our soggy sneakers. I imagined falling in, drifting down the Missouri and the Mississippi and past New Orleans and into the Gulf, where sharks probably linger to feed on tadpoles and poor little boys from Nebraska.
Mulberries
Why don't they sell mulberries at the grocery store? I wonder, plucking the fat purple ones with my right fingers and passing them to my left for safe keeping. You admit that you don't know, and through the leaves I see you smile the way mothers smile to children who ask many inscrutable questions. When I have savored the juicy berries, my palms are bruised blue. I resist holding your hand for the rest of our stroll around the tired neighborhood, though you would never refuse me.
Red Mud
On one dismal Saturday morning John Mudder found his neighbor face-down beneath the frown of an ominous sky, condemned before endless stretches of soggy corn fields. Dead on borrowed property, done in by debt and deluge, he laid next to his rifle in a pool of red mud. The LAND giveth, and the LAND taketh away; cursed is the ground because of you. Mr. Mudder called the farmer’s wife, and they waited and wept by his side as an ambulance spun down the sloppy country road.
Dignity
Watchwoman of the river valley welcoming naked souls from the peripheries of lonely I-90. On the crest of the bluff, you lift your supple arms of steel to catch the prairie gale in a sapphire quilt, as if intending to take flight and ride the wind down through the valley below, like some diaphanous mother eagle, to patrol the river and the fisherfolk and the bridge that spans the river, before returning to your perch above to keep watch from the bluff. Dignity of Earth and Sky.
Freewheelin’
They raced off the interstate to make water a ways west of Oacoma while Bob Dylan resuscitated his harmonica. Back-to-back-to-sunburnt back they stood like lookouts on three sides of a sun-blasted Taurus. Doors ajar, flies down, CD player spinning The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. "I don't think he knows what he's doin' on that harmonica," said the driver. "Can't sing much either," observed another as the third buttoned his stonewash Levi's and sat down on the sweltering hood. A falcon's razor shadow glided over the Taurus and vanished into a grove of cottonwoods as Dylan panted on: Honey, just allow me one more chance.
Cameron Brooks is an M.F.A. candidate at Seattle Pacific University. He holds an M.A. from Princeton Seminary and serves as Managing Editor for Vanora, an artist collaboration website. Hispoems have appeared in Poetry East, North Dakota Quarterly, Fathom Magazine, and elsewhere. Cameron lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. You can check out his website and Instagram.
