by Ellen Stone
For Ann Arbor and the Huron River
Blue rain over the wet street, sponging the soccer field. Rain of endlessness, the
way another river takes me home. This one neat and tidy against moss-matted
grass, sidewalk squares where too many geese say it’s easier to make do in a
college town where kids still toss them crusts and all the adults are activists for this
or that. Because a river holds everything we need and most of what we don’t. Rivers
collect, yet the water’s never stagnant. A container, but the water’s never still.
No one stays put in a river town. We’re all able to be in one place, but always about
to go elsewhere—that need to move, change, become—hovering above the water.
Give me a raft, kayak, tube, canoe or just a lazy bridge and a boardwalk. Oh, Huron,
let me rest in your wake, keep me a while until the next curve or spill, flood or
drought. I am about the river, born to it, prone to that journey, no matter the catch
or current, what far bay or body I’ll be bound for.
Listen to the poem here:
River seeking at Barton Nature Area. Photo credit: C. Finch
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Ellen Stone lives near Abbot woods on Sequoia Parkway and circles the city’s river and trees with her old dog daily. She advises Community High’s Poetry Club, co-hosts the Skazat! poetry series, and is an editor at Public School Poetry, a new literary journal.
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This is an original poem, brought to you by Poet Tree Town, a Washtenaw-based poetry-in-public initiative and celebration of local poets. Find out more about Poet Tree Town on Instagram and Facebook, or say hello at [email protected].
