Poems by Alene Boyer

Having Spent a Lifetime Raging

by Alene Boyer

From Canary Fall 2021

Alene lives in the Great Lakes/Calumet River watershed and has walked along the ever-changing western shore of Lake Michigan at sunrise nearly every day, in every season, for over 25 years.

I’d rather go gentle as driftwood goes,
groundless, fluvial, relinquish my grip
on the life I know, slip down a steep
bank and into the flow of a fast-moving
stream, travel effortlessly from old growth
tree to pontoon for fungi and algae—
a meandering rung between water and
sky for the larvae of net-spinning
caddisfly. I’d rather linger as driftwood
lingers in logjams en route to the sea,
let water eddy where sky used to be,
allow salmon to spawn where birds
once built their nests, trap seeds and
silt, learn to improvise, grow grasses
for shrews, chipmunks, voles and deer
mice, who’ll tempt the reflections of
hawks to fly across limpid, limb-cracked
mirrors of sky. I’d rather drift the way
driftwood drifts into flowing estuaries,
unruffled by tides and the coming and
going of bald eagles, cormorants, herons,
and snakes who’d perch while I glide
through the brackish firth, leaving only
ripples in my wake. I’d rather sigh
the way driftwood murmurs and sighs
when it reaches the sea—what a relief,
after centuries staving off bark beetles,
budworms, root rot, and drought, to open
my heartwood to shipworms and gribbles,
be honeycombed into a floating reef.
I’d rather lie the way driftwood lies, at last,
on the beach—wave-worn, sun-bleached,
worm-riven, still. The sun can burn and
rave at close of day and the sea can rage;
let the tides wreathe me in rockweed,
sea lettuce, sargassum, and kelp, and the
tiny gray sand hoppers have their fill.