Michael Lauchlan: “Walking by the River”
WALKING BY THE RIVER
An old neighbor—last name
forgotten—is being yanked around
by his black lab. I ask about health
and he pats his chest and tugs the leash,
Not bad this week. We wave. The river
rushes and turns over branches and rocks
and somebody’s suitcase lodged in a crag
and the March sky has gone to a blue
that feels in the guts like falling down
a flight of stairs or looking at her that
first time and seeing her furrow and turn
in a way that had nothing to do with me
watching. And the current curls away
pulling sticks and leaves under a bridge
and around a bend cut in the earth
long before the plank road to Chicago
and the first horses’ heads pointed west.
We’ve been winking and nodding
and staring at each other all along,
carving traces into our phrases and genes.
I was conceived, I’m told, by a woman
and a man who’d run out of words
entirely and must have found some
way in the dark to gesture, touch,
sweat their way to a momentary detente.
It churns on and we go off to work,
shifting shyly as though we might bow,
each turning toward the other or away,
pretending at busyness or letting on
how little we really need to do—what
with water flowing freely from taps
and light falling from the ceiling. Maybe
we pause in an office where a copier hums
or in a corridor of students gliding past
and our lips shape smiles and words.
We sluice away in pulsing machines,
honking and blinking, until we enter
the loud silence of homes, to seek
in eyes the squinch of kindness, to read
the shoulders that hunch or open, faces
that look up from screens or don’t.
Michael Lauchlan has contributed to many publications, including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, and Lake Effect. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press.