Fire On the Ohio River
The boat rocks gently under a reddening sun;
is it wrong to wish for a Viking funeral,
to ponder a last journey West
into the dying light?
I could rest my soul here in this skiff
on this long warm wave of evening;
allowing the wooded lands, the sloping meadows,
the smoke-stacked barge brimming ports,
the patched up river towns to slip on
...
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Categories:
ohio river, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Watching From a Skiff On the Ohio River
Herons fragment the mist,
appear and disappear while remaining motionless.
The skiff rocks as a coal barge trundles past.
A dewy sky shivers.
Nowadays he just sits in a boat looking at Ohio.
This morning the sun reached the top of a willow
and got stuck.
He rowed toward the bank thinking to get under the tree,
filled an imaginary pipe full of
...
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Categories:
ohio river, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Fire On the Ohio River
My boat rocks gently under a reddening sun,
is it wrong to wish for a Viking burial,
to ponder a last journey West
into the dying light?
Strangers have always been my friends,
they intuit
the liquid and inflammable nature
of this thing we do.
I could rest my soul here in this skiff
on this one long warm wave of evening;
let the wooded
...
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Categories:
ohio river, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Ohio River At Sunset
lights flicker on the far side
as Kentucky folds its dark robes
a barge nudges
the river into dusk
bundles of clouds kindle
a shimmering pause
the river opens its body
to swallow the sun
knee deep in shadow
a heron yawps
silver fish ripple through
shoaling branches
here on a crooked pier
spawning stars surface
from the milky eyes
of the recently drowned
...
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Categories:
ohio river, poetry,
Form: Blank verse
River Findings
River Findings
The Ohio winds around hills
and streams down the hollows
passes steel mills, brick yards and scrap yards.
It carries tug boats, pushes barges, and hauls
black coal stripped from the mountainsides.
The Ohio’s littered banks
are home to train yards
filled with graffiti-covered box cars
rusting relics of the Southern Pacific
and the Norfolk and Southern railroads.
Erector set bridges
...
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Categories:
ohio river, imagery, perspective, river, travel,
Form: Free verse