The Bluestone Review 2020

The Bluestone Review 2020

Poetry Jumping in the River By Audrey Raden

We never use the boat cause the river’s only ten feet wide. Still, getting to the other side is a problem. We try stepping back far enough to build up steam but if ten feet is short for a boat, it’s long for a jump. Truth is, none of us has ever cleared it. And the water’s deeper than it looks. If you land in the middle it comes up to the seat of your pants. That’s if you keep your footing cause the rocks are slimy. Of course while you’re running you can slip along the hay— there’s nothing like fresh cut hay to slow a man down. Sometimes we spend all afternoon trying to jump across the river.

The clouds move slow, like cotton bolls still dirty, but weightless from the ginning. The cow looks up but keeps chewing when another man falls in. “Durn it,” he says, pouring minnows from his boot. Sometimes in the slow moving of the clouds stalks of light single out the tear-shaped bales that grow taller than men. It’s the light that’s moving, but the bale looks caught in that soft and terrible illumination. I stop, watch as the light changes too slow to name. When we were boys we’d call that God. Now it’s weather. “Doggonit!” cries my partner, shaking green water from his legs, “There’s algae on my privates.” The cow grazes. The boy fishes. I go on raking.

*from the painting Marshfield Meadows, 1878, by Martin Johnson Heade

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