IDIOT YEARS

by Thomas R. Smith

Our Mayan friend Martín says we’re sick with
a collective “unmetabolized grief.”
Civil War, Vietnam, Iraq, the list goes on.
Our response? Build higher psychic dams
to hold the tears. Those dams, ridiculously
expensive, bulge above every town, city,
and farm—few notice the supports straining,
the hairline cracks webbing the concrete poured
by profiteers grown fat on our denial.
Will it be said of us that we did not
possess the curiosity to inquire
what was being done to the world in our name
with our tax dollars? That we also were
mad to allow the mad to lead us?
Mad or, worse, indifferent? Dylan called
us an idiot, babe. When we’ve bombed
the earth to rubble, shall we then bomb
the rubble to sand? There’s beachfront property
for you rich to enjoy in your idiot years
before the dammed tears sweep you away.

Thomas R. Smith’s recent books are a poetry collection Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press). He lives in western Wisconsin near the Kinnickinnic River.

KLAMATH RESURRECTION

by Pepper Trail

The Largest Dam Removal Project in U.S. History Begins Final Stretch, Welcoming Salmon Home. After being impeded by dams for more than a century, the Klamath River will be restored to its historic channel this year. —Smithsonian, January 22, 2024. Photo above by Pepper Trail.

When the dams rose, the river did not die
But lost its body, became spirit
Haunting the slackwater depths of the lake
Invisible beneath the dull skin of surface
For those long years, suspended, adrift
It awaited the touch of resurrection
The returning salmon, barred behind a locked door
While a new rabble stirred the helpless warmth
Bullhead and perch and pumpkinseed
Soft-bellied and sleepy in the stillness
 
Now, just now, the iron gates broken
The river is gasping back to life
Moving again time-withered muscles
Reaching blind careful fingers
Retracing its path through the canyon of mud
Remembering, curve by curve, its body
Its purpose, to move without stopping
To dance with the shapes of the land
To keep its ancient promise
To welcome the salmon, and meet the sea

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.