A Close Shave

From Baden, or what’s left of it,

pursue a long, smooth curve of road

that skirts the northern flood wall

to parallel a palisade

of channel markers sunk in earth,

the folly of a cement works.

Its blank silos overlook

a pit of argillaceous shale,

the fine and fossilized remains

of bivalves, sponges, spines of shark,

quarried and burnt with limestone charge

to alchemize a binder of brick

and the city’s shallow, brittle crust.

Around a bend, the riverbed

swings wide to open a fetch of field.

Shadows skim its mucky thaw

as juncos, whisked about by the wind

on courses neither fixed nor free,

give but a quick metallic chink.

Behind you, rain has wrapped the bluffs

and scumbled limbs of sycamores.

Ahead, each bend assumes the name

of a gaudy packet run aground,

or snagged and sunk, or blown to bits:

for one, the side-wheel Amazon,

pluperfect wheelhouse painted green,

that struck a honey-locust pike

still rooted deep in river mud

and tore its hull from stem to stern.

Down in minutes! Within the month

an island silted up behind.

A flock of luggage floated south,

remarked by those on Water Street

loafing before the trading post

and the barbershop of Madame Krull.

She can eternally be found

at work in her elaborate room

toujours prêt to clip and coif

or wield her razor with great skill

for those who favor her with their chins.

The scent of ginger tonic blends

with that of borscht, its acrid tang,

consumed behind a wooden screen

as Illinois grows dark. In this,

her second year since coming west.