Poems by Susanna Lang

Postcards from the River

by Susanna Lang

I wrote the poem along the North Branch of the Chicago River, which is also listed as the watershed for the zip code where I live.

Last night’s rain brought down
a scatter of yellow leaves

still sailing with me this morning.
A goldfinch flies over my shoulder.

* * *

I run between and around you.
I slip beneath your bridges.

I make common cause with what lives along my banks:
monarch, grasshopper, milkweed, hawk.

You, too—you come here sometimes
to walk between land and water.

* * *

A small boy has persuaded a fuzzy caterpillar
to crawl up his arm.

The boy’s mother offers to take a photo
before he leaves the caterpillar behind—

that wasn’t part of his plan.

* * *

I host my own air and water show
though I don’t make so much noise about it.

Look, you have disturbed an entire flock of finches—
they rise in their undulating waves

singing defiance.

* * *

I am fat with the summer’s rain,
water lapping over my banks,

making the long grasses dance
to its rhythm.

The song of the katydids is fuller now,
more layered with voices.

Seed pods split open, spill their wealth—
more gold for next year.

Small bitter fruits form in the branches:
they are not for you.

* * *

We are different today than we were yesterday.

Even you can sense that the air is thicker
and the wind holds the promise of more rain, maybe thunder.

Some birds—warblers, swallows—have already left.
You may not know how to notice an absence.

* * *

You have dug up my banks again,
mounded the dirt.

Your heavy trucks push and tug at the world.

But the soil carries its seeds within
and now the mounds have adorned themselves—

goldenrod, cone flower, asters, bee balm.

* * *

Some of the lost have returned.
A great blue heron fishes in the shallows,

black-crowned night heron on a fallen log,
cormorant midstream, hawk overhead.

One of each kind. How many more will return?
How many more will never come back?