Written some years ago, this poem resurrects a winter trip to Pere Marquette State Park with my sister, Marilyn, to southern Illinois. We stayed in Pere Marquette Lodge, which echoes Yellowstone’s and Yosemite’s. It is sited at the point where three rivers (Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi) course as one, –keeping the waters open, blessing the birds The rangers at Pere Marquette State Park told us at our dawn confluence (of naturalists), “Every black dot is an eagle.”
CONFLUENCE
this wild connection
proves turbulent as two rivers
–Illinois, Missouri –
coursing, writhing
between blonde flanks
of tower-rocks
that funneled Pere Marquette
in his frail bark
smack into the Mississippi
here eagles cry and joust
for winter fish
–all smaller tributaries
marble-hard
releasing no nourishment
two tumultuous rivers
crest, fling spray
scour their own depths
til scale-silvered life
meets fate
in gilded beaks and talons
–two voluminous rivers roiling
until fish take wing
CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN
