Even the Ohio Can Change

Rick Campbell

The river I grew up on was rank

with oil. Shoreline stones

gleamed slick-blue and nothing

in the river was worth a slug

of scrap metal: carp and catfish,

sick, riddled with chemical blood.

My river was for barges,

owned by US Steel, ARMCO, J&L.

They pumped it full of slag,

dripped and drained oil and gas

through a thousand hidden holes.

Nothing good could come of it

except a living and life,

a whole valley's clinging dream.

The Indians who named it beautiful river

weren't wrong; how could they know

what would come, dark and sooty,

burning the sky, turning the earth

to mud and cinder.

Even in our terrible need

we couldn't kill it and the river

is coming back to river once again.

In the cold ruin of the Ohio's banks

muskies swim the secret paths below.

We grow older, the river younger,

and great fish smash into the air

to swallow a caterpillar

fallen from a willow branch.