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Column 488

Creek-Song

Intro by Ted Kooser
07.27.2014

Here’s a poem by an Indi­ana poet, Shari Wag­n­er, that has a delight­ful time describ­ing the many sounds of run­ning water.

Creek-Song

It begins in a cow lane
with bees and white clover,
courses along corn, rushes
accelerando against rocks.
It rises to a teetering pitch
as I cross a shaky tree-bridge,
syncopates a riff
over the dissonance
of trash—derelict icebox
with a missing door,
mohair loveseat sinking
into thistle. It winds through green
adder’s mouth, faint as the bells
of Holsteins heading home.
Blue shadows lengthen,
but the undertow
of a harmony pulls me on
through raspy Joe-pye-weed
and staccato-barbed fence.
It hums in a culvert
beneath cars, then empties
into a river that flows oboe-deep
past Indian dance ground, waterwheel
and town, past the bleached
stones in the churchyard,
the darkening hill.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by The Christian Century. Shari Wagner’s most recent book of poetry is The Harmonist at Nightfall, Bottom Dog Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of The Christian Century and the poet. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.