Louise Cary Barden

Our Second Year. The River.

After The Mulberry swelled under April rains, rose
over its rock islands and brushy willows
on the shore, we pushed a borrowed canoe
into roar after roar of water, sudden
angles of current, sharp drops
into brief pools before it rushed on.

Warned by the thunder of falls, time after time, we
hauled out onto wooded banks and walked ahead
to plot our course, then launched our fragile
shell back into the current, strained muscles
sweeping paddles in rhythm — hard left, sharp
right, straight down the chute past tips of saplings
bent under the flood. On either side honeysuckle tangles,
beds of lady slippers, tall trees emerged
and disappeared until suddenly
a bump, a scrape — shrub submerged under our side–

wild flip and catapult, instant plunge
into frigid water. No life jackets, just
the instinct to surface from cold dark calm, a short stretch
of slowing stream. Separate,
we broke the surface, shrieking
into sun-streaked air. We laughed
as we stroked together to catch
our drifting craft before the water
gathered and sped on. Up on the bank, a little fire
to dry our clothes, a steaming cup of tea, then back
to the river wild. That day thirty rapids

dropped us down to where poplars
cast an emerald net over moonlit sky. We
curled together in our double sleeping bag,
and closed our eyes. Lulled
by the river’s song, we didn’t dream
of August, rainless weeks ahead. We didn’t see
how we’d sit apart, too hot to touch
while tomatoes shriveled and marigolds
turned brown. Caught in adventure, night visions
of that spring rush, we couldn’t imagine, not once,
the way life might be without water.

Louise Cary Barden is winner of the 2018 Lois Cranston Memorial Prize from Calyx Press, the 2018 Oregon Poetry Association Member’s Choice Award, and The NC Writer’s Network’s Harperprints chapbook award. She was also a finalist for the 2017 Southwest Review’s Marr Prize (for forms). Her poems have appeared in Timberline, Willawaw, Greensboro, Chattahoochee Review, and others. A retired college English instructor, advertising copywriter and editorial writer, she recently moved from NC to Oregon to be near grandchildren.