Canoe

By Dawn Marie Knopf 

How might we & the waters labor over
now the new naming of the rapid

by those who first travel that stretch
of river named rightfully The Bronco

after the tributary from the South & also
after the way in which they advise

it be treated as a Bronc be
loose in the hips guided by The Elder

look into his eyes his bluebeard

braid please expect the shortest rapture
as danger in those fleets that fly through

the body where the past itself flees then

fixates from the gulches to the minarets
then from the moment to the map

made from the legends told of that

voyage by first the namers then the Russian
trappers the bartenders the riverguides then

the fieldguide sold with illustration

This poem is a public submission created for Red Room Poetry's THEthe Poetry project.