The author fly fishing on the Root River. (Submitted photo)
Poetry: An Ode…A Shiver…A Loon
Birth Order, An Ode to My Sister
As Canada geese migrate south
in an unbalanced V
changing order,
So have we been.
Early on, our birth order morphed.
My eldest status and your middle child reversed
Your teenage self, caretaking
a sick younger sibling who
called out for you, not me
in the middle of the night.
I wandered into adulthood, while
you, grounded, created a family
first, and put us all first.
Really, it matters less.
Birthright, that is, for girls.
Deemed important for
Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau,
King Charles crowned at age 74.
Well, marriage order mattered
for Leah and Rachel as
Jacob worked seven years for elder Leah,
another, seven for preferred sister Rachel.
For us, though,
firstborn status shifts
opaque to the world.
Now, our autumn lives turn
browns and rusts,
yellows and blazing orange
and nature calls us to migrate
Each swaps out—drafting,
catching her breath, conserving energy
while the other wings aloft,
tempering the inevitable bite
of winter for her sister.
Shiver
You must know that we
stayed at the lake and
one cool evening the
eagle swooped down
out of the tree in front of
the cabin and glided out
over the lake where the loon
and her chicks were bobbing
gently over the waves
caused by the paddles of
our kayaks and also the
swelling rings glowed pink with
the radiant strands of light
that streamed through the
striated slivers in the evening
clouds and the perch and
the northern began to hit
at the edges adding to the
gathering turbulence our
clumsy crafts absorbed and
we may have been oblivious
but for the ancient invisible
ripple that holds us all together
loosely and yet present
in one small shiver.
Perspicuity
My kayak paddle makes small
splashes in the quiet
of a late October morning
generating a flickering of
double foliage flames
at once licking a mirror lake
and etching orange-red-
golden outlines against
blue crispness that
burns beyond the retina
a lucidity by which
the black outline of
a loon skidding up
off the surface startles
and wonder how I could
have ever been confused.
© Rebecca Damron 2024
…………………
Contributor
Rebecca (Becky) Damron’s move to Lanesboro is a return home to the Upper Midwest after many years away. She owns Driftless Fiber Arts in Lanesboro.
Root River Current’s coverage of literary arts is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.
