Kuskokwim Break-Up
By Jack Campbell
The river could visit new country tonight
leaving the old river behind in a vast lake.
Gone out in Napaimute. Jam below Crooked Creek.
Sliver quarter moon above the only gift darkness offers.
Sleep fits hardly into short nights.
A child dreams of a white whiskered uncle
wallowing in bone-chilling black ice slush.
The moving frozen garden has no alarm bell,
only rhapsodic music needle ice makes falling into itself,
or moans of earth banks being gashed forever away
by tumbling ice boulders the size of clouds.
Our high watermark willow sticks submerge
while we await the inevitable surge.
• Jack Campbell lives in Excursion Inlet. His second book of poetry, “The Outhouse Spider: New and Selected Poems,” is currently in publication.
