Christopher McCormick
The Maumee Sleeps, The Ottowa Sleeps
This river is haunted by clouds
floundering by in late August,
a voice like silt cloying
the men to its banks. This river
bends light. This river hardens
in Winter before it softens
again in Spring. This river cradles
the bones of charlatans, beauties
who prayed in defiance of rain.
This river laps at our ears
in our dreams. This river is asleep,
it falls and rises like deep breath.
One night, a woman asked this river
to bear her away, for no better
reason than because that is what
rivers do. She was my neighbor.
Her two boys and I spent our
days collecting acorns to throw
through neighbor’s windows.
In the end, this river became
the home she could never have had
in this life. Somehow,
I knew this. I also knew
that the only way to become
like a river myself was to stare
into one for a long time—
the same river her bare toes had teased
with their stillness—until
my blood would begin to sing in the language
of rivers, or until the stars,
one by one, would unstitch
themselves from the canvas of night
like the angels I believed in then.
But no. No. This river knew better.
Christopher McCormick is a poet from Ohio. His work appears in The Maine Review, The Midwest Review, Thin Air Magazine and West Trade Review among other publications. He teaches in the English department at Ohio Northern University and reads for Beaver Magazine.