Madison Bounty

"On the river, every day these heavy rains–
bleak, bleak, autumn in Ching-ch'u!
High winds strip the leaves from the trees;
through the long night I hug my fur robe."
   – Tu Fu, from "On the River"









Aug. 28

In only the matter of three days I have had the opportunity to hold land management tools in my hand and prune away a runaway patch of dogwoods along the old fence line oaks at Curtis Prairie at the Arboretum, and to carefully place sandbags along the edge of my yard at the sidewalk hoping they might hold out flooding waters creeping up tonight from the storm drains. As I look out my bedroom window right now, the house across the street, old and mostly colorless, is quite brightly beautiful under a morning flash of sunshine; in a few hours it is predicted rain that might very well send the river over its banks. Tu Fu and a thousand others have lived through their own river times, their own age of water, which we love, we drink, and we most certainly think about.


The river does not seek to become wild,
it merely moves along the creases it hasn't known.
Banks, stoned off, outcropped, decked,
set in place for us to watch from, to love
the river in much a way that we would indeed
our companions, our families, or mates.
The river pours up over its various blockades.
The rocks and docks give way and we are left
with result of gravity nothing to do with death.