Poems by Carson Colenbaugh

On the Winding, Muddy Stream

by Carson Colenbaugh

From Canary Fall 2020

Carson grew up on the banks of Proctor Creek and is currently a horticulture student in the watershed of the Savannah River. His favorite plant is striped wintergreen, which he searches for beneath the leaf litter.

Put-In

You don’t get over your first dead dog.
A black back and a white belly,
it wasn’t rotting or festering
but I didn’t know it was there
and its teeth were still flashing
in the everlasting snarl
and the stench came and filtered my way
and I knew it was dead.

Bridge I

We meet the tenants of the plains,
the bobcat running down the game trails,
wood ducks in the early morning, flapping,
beavers still in the mud and the grass.
A kingfisher on the fallen branches.
A cardinal in the bush.

Bridge II

We recite stuff we know by heart
and laugh and forget to paddle
and drift in the current, twirling in the eddies
enveloped in the sweet rot of the river,
the musty and alive smell
of algae and fish eggs and sediment
and oil spills, and freshwater.

Bridge III

We shoot through the pylons of a mighty bridge
and get sent flyin’ through the water.
New explorers in an old land,
old men under a young sun.

Bridges IV-VII

Nothing but the everlasting flow of water
west
in the rain and the downpour,
the cloudy afternoon.

Take-Out

Rice and vegetables in the town.
The smell of the rain, and the fire, and the river,
but always of the river.

Previously published in the author’s collection, Tell Those to Come.

Tell Those to Come

by Carson Colenbaugh

From Canary Spring 2022

Pouring warm tea in an old tin cup,
picking mint from the windowsill—
it's rainy today and I’ve
forgotten my jacket; the things we do
to survive.

Green glass and ceramic mugs
and all the other things they’ll dredge from
the midden piles of our generation one day,
just as we dig out old shells and
arrowheads, tools of the great harvesters.

Foraging, seeking, making fire—
picking mushrooms in the sprinkling
afternoon with my friend who knows which
ones we can still eat
after all these years.