Carson Colenbaugh: “Feeding: Savannah River at Twilight”
FEEDING: SAVANNAH RIVER AT TWILIGHT
Below the Hartwell Dam
Forty-seven seagulls hound the buoy line’s
netted margins, crowding open swaths of violet sky
above the wide river as they feast on unseen
shreds of succulent tissue. My guess, putrid fish scraps
diced by the hydroelectric blades, spewed out
as a fleshy sluice. Yours, drowned deer strangled in the nets
after being crushed by the great force of water
fleeing each concrete flume output. The seagulls here
are illuminated like swarming gnats at low sun,
lit like the unconscious masses of the universe
beyond. Their desperation is feverish
and immensely cruel. They swipe at each other,
blood on the beak and belly, squealing as they dive
with savage precision into the stew of guts
and feathered bodies. From our opposite shore, the scene
disperses quickly. We sit in blankets, protected
from the empty outerness, huddled beneath evening’s
weight as it drives the daylight down. The ravenous gulls
recede into night. Stragglers hover by the river
or shelter among sheaths of red alder, leaving
only the sounds of our bodies against each other
and guffawing herons, who float on titan wings
down to the water, strike and lift off, and go
to caress their begging younglings with fresh meat.
Carson Colenbaugh is a forest ecologist and prescribed fire technician. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Review, Chautauqua, Poetry South, Delta Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He was awarded an honorable mention from the 2022 Tor House Prize for Poetry.