Prick of the Spindle: Poetry: Trent: On Her Mighty Rivers

On Her Might Rivers, Her Dark, Deep Valleys
By Letitia Trent

—after the Journals of Lewis and Clark

I know not whether to laugh
or cry with her

she of dark yellow loam
covered with grass
with lawyers with colliers
and farmers

made of logs
made of water
through which the river winds

Today I killed an elk and five
kind correspondences

Oh I am well
but weak

The nights here
are so cold that two blankets
are like liturgy

She rotted
our twenty pounds of rag and meat
She broke the ice
at the river’s throat

                                                         This difficult valley isn’t just
                                             the hand of her God
                                   but a living letter

She bears a dispatch
to my hunting health
and limbs

I long to read her but fear the absence
of alphabet, her language of whistles and burrow I hope
that this is the height of her opera

                                                          but I shouldn’t
                                               scold a highly improvable
                                    land and sea so

Letitia Trent's work has appeared in The Denver Quarterly, Folio, Ocho, Blazevox, and Gulfstream, among other literary magazines both in print and online. Her chapbook, The Medical Diaries, is available from Scantily Clad Press.