Low in the ghostly zone behind the dam
beneath the bleached cliff and black water line
left by the river’s sudden abeyance
I wait as a wetter season arrives,
the thaw’s flow. The cracked floor absorbs
faster than the rain falls, shines the seams
but does not heal. High above tall houses sit
on the former shore. I am not alone.
The curious and researchers scavenge
the small structures, invasive and native,
that suffocated wildly, slowly, here
while power company customers
marveled at the mystery and the scale.
Park Rangers on two week assignments
with per diem field their theories, where the pressure
relieved, how a river could all at once retreat.
Other manmade lakes have disappeared, say
the experts calmly, say internet entries,
rare, yes, but explicable, and now locals
speak with authority on aquifers and sediment.
My functionary’s possessiveness
lured me here, like to a past regime’s auction.
Before it was submerged this rural land
had to be cleared— that was my office.
Evictions, expirations, foreclosures,
by legal means the place was carried off.
I remember the map grid colors shift
red to blue, like with any project,
the deadlines met in fretful succession.
Accomplishing the place, I used to walk
the dirt path behind the school’s woods
where the tired river was kept and tell it
how it would sweep away the school, the woods
the foul line’s white lye from the baseball field,
up a last run of the sledding hill, put
a hand on each of the pillaring hills.
An interrogator offering the world
to a captive with yet no plans to turn.
I had not thought that care was taken
to excavate the concrete foundations
and expected the grid of the old town
to lay itself out to my memory
but it is gone. Below the arisen lake
currents of sifting sands, like drifted snow,
plied under the remains of the houses.
I must stand still feet above the streets.
Expected, too, descendents of the civic clubs
who fought us to hold some sort of event,
bragging on our failure, lamenting the waste,
naming those founders I had to hear
so much about. But if anyone beside me
remembers the place, the red-fronted armory,
deploring voices, they are silent now
and perhaps as perplexed as I am, turned
trying to triangulate the past by hill shape.
But now real rain, tiny meniscus bursts
as puddle joins with puddle, making pool.
The path winding down from a parking lot
turns back to bottom mud fastest of all.
The Ranger post and its generator
will be left behind, a useless landmark
to those being told to walk quickly, now
in the suddenly stormed over sundown.
As I step over a hasty escarpment,
that ancient river, your silver push,
the tall houses, their brown lawns, are dim
but soon, electricity and flowers.
Whatever weakness briefly gave, it holds
now where at the foot of the dam a rising bank
highlights and enfolds the grades, and rolls
at me, like a man made a promise. Take it
now like a shallow bay returning, recover
the floor, the height of the cliff wall, hurry
above my head, by river and rain, come
like the tide. Make me run for my life.
by Keith Seher
Keith Seher works out of the Cleveland area, and has been writing since he was 13. I belongs to a number of poetry groups, including the Butchershop, and private workshop which has been meeting for more than 45 years.
