Elegy: River

Again, the sheriff’s boat looking, 
looking, covering at barely 
a chug the part of the gorge
where we row -- it tries

to glimpse a t-shirt, a shoe. 
Now, at the end of our practice, revs up,
speeds downriver, making a wake
that gathers form and froth 

as it crosses from St. Paul 
to Minneapolis, a wake we need 
to watch out for.  We strongarm
our singles away from the dock, 

buffer the slam of the waves.
On the river, danger:  buoys,
bridge abutments, deadheads, 
south wind, current, cold, other 

boats. Our club has a safety committee, 
rules, consequences.  We learn
to pay attention.  Whoever
jumped, danger visited that 

person, too.  They say the river
is like concrete when your body
hits it.  A solid portal into another
world.  Unfathomable.  But then

who knows what the one who throws
a leg over the rail is fleeing, trembling,
resolute, what hope might look like 
in the letting go?

Suzanne Swanson is the author of House of Music. A perinatal psychologist, she wrote the chapbook What Other Worlds: Postpartum Poems for both parents and professionals. She is a winner of the Loft Mentor Series; she helped to found Laurel Poetry Collective. Suzanne’s poems have appeared in literary journals and in the Land Stewardship Letter. She rows on the Mississippi River and is happiest near big water.