A miracle of goldfish still flicker like
sunlit coins through dark matter.
This river asks for so little,
sings beneath Bascom bridges.
It’s Prairie Wolf Slough’s Gloria
of marsh marigold, pale geranium,
trout lily, swamp buttercup.
Clothed in its liquid vestment,
raiment where deer and fox
drink and mark the hours.
A river that remembers
vast woodlands, meadows
flaming in the silence marking time.
This is the otter’s prayer
a ballet of plunges and dives.
The mallard’s dark procession
on silk waters, then sudden flight
across dawn’s flare where sky holds
them to perfect blue roads.
They do not see the presence that enfolds them,
so intimate their animal trust.
Renny Golden
(Corinne) Renny Golden was a Pushcart nominee in 2016. Her book, Blood Desert: Witnesses 1820-1880, won the WILLA Literary Award for poetry 2011, was named a Southwest Notable Book of the Year 2012, and a Finalist for the New Mexico Book Award. The Old Woman and the River is coming in 2019 from University of New Mexico Press. She's been published and anthologized widely including in the following journals: Water~Stone; International Quarterly; Literary Review; Dogwood; Main Street Rag; Windhover; Able Muse; Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review; Split This Rock; Nagatuck River Review; Crosswinds.