Red Canoe on Still Water with Clouds
Below, the water is a sky so blue
the canoe’s red might be a leaf
unmoored from the sumac, buoyed
by the pure float of cumulus.
Above, the same exuberance of white
and blue, but without the scarlet gash
of her body, empty as an autumn pod,
and the dock some poet has lashed it to.
Across the lake, the dark brush and trees
rise from their reflections, grounded
both to the hidden earth and to radiant
ideas of themselves, almost perfectly true.
From The Red Canoe, Finishing Line Press, 2017, previously published in Siouxland Magazine, summer 2008.
Red Canoe at Morning on Still Water
Near the far shore the lake
flattens out. The cottonwoods
stand in the sun on their own
yellows and greens.
But in the center some
hidden current unsilvers
the water like the mottling
of an old mirror.
And from that troubling
wisps of mist move sideways
in stretched puffs of gray
as from a pipe.
The red canoe is tied up,
inescapable, conspicuous
against the soft wash,
a statement of pure fact.
From The Red Canoe, Finishing Line Press, 2017.
The Red Canoe Dreams of Spring
On a frozen lake, there can be no reflection,
no meeting of minds between earth and sky.
The snow on the ice may shimmer
under the light of the moon, but Heaven
is no closer, cannot marry the Earth.
The red canoe is lonely at the ice-edge.
She longs for the spring softening, the limber
dip and roll, when the body of water takes
the moon’s form into its bed, eases her
from the rarity of space to the common
tenderness of thaw, and mingles with her
in the shimmer and motion of love.
She dozes and dreams she is the moon,
a crescent waxing. Coppery, polished.
Then she dreams herself skidding
headlong down the sky onto the ice.
She does not break. The lake goes soft,
takes her into its heart, strokes her,
rocks her in its arms. She feels
her blood heat up and move in her.
From The Red Canoe, Finishing Line Press, 2017.
Jeanne Emmons was born in Louisiana, received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas, and currently lives and teaches in South Dakota. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Alaska Quarterly Review, American Scholar, Prairie Schooner, and New Orleans Review. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the James Hearst Poetry Prize for 2006. She is poetry editor of the Briar Cliff Review and lives in McCook Lake, South Dakota.