The snow lies unbroken
on the empty soccer fields.
Only goalposts interrupt
the season’s vast expanse.
We make our marks in morning’s
powder, my black dog trotting
ahead as I poke footsteps slowly
toward the Kalamazoo.
There, mud flats stretch and sheen
from east to west amid the river’s
ribbons. A dam that held the current back
for eighty years needs work itself.
No one’s seen this dirt in decades,
and workers warn of sinking in
above their knees. I heed their words
but long to walk where water flowed.
So many hours I’ve spent paddling
on this lake, carp and catfish
churning up the muck, slapping
hard against my boat.
Come spring, I’ll have to find another
launch for gliding into quiet haunts
where sandhills nest and turtles
rest on jagged limbs and slippery rocks.
Today I simply watch
the sky spread iridescence
on the river’s skin, the muddy flats,
my retriever’s gleaming back.
_
Margaret DeRitter is the author of the full-length poetry collection “Singing Back to the Sirens” (Unsolicited Press, 2020). She also won the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest for “Fly Me to Heaven By Way of New Jersey.” Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Amsterdam Quarterly, Blue Heron Review and The 3288 Review, where one of her poems received a Pushcart Prize nomination. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she was a newspaper journalist for 22 years and currently serves as copy editor for Encore magazine.
© 2023, Margaret DeRitter
Halfway Down the Stairs 