A poet teaches

River silt still sticks to the windowsills. The flood waters receded more than a month ago but we are living with their legacy every day. The “river sculptor” has carved a new landscape. We work around it, trying to recover a sense of what we lost, knowing the reality of the new life, the post-flood life, will be different.

A formerly dark entryway will be brightened with sunny yellow walls and a hard tile floor, defiant against the next onslaught. The floor itself will mimic river stone—what else would serve to honor the surge of ’06?

Slowly, a new surface reveals itself—re-thought structures, bare perimeters once framed by hemlocks, a missing boat. Our lives, too, are re-thought. What matters?

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