Rob Winger : River Update

from Report from the Anstee Society, Vol. 1 No. 1

 

 

 

 

 

Weekdays from the bridge
you update us, top-down,
on the river. 

Those pictures aren’t
cubism. Each sheet
snaps its own current. 

So they’re not so much
diary as signal flare:
here, you’re telling us. 

We’re here, crossing
over wind and water.
We’re carried, you’re 

saying, by white
water over ice,
by drift or steel 

girder, by trestle.
So let’s hold firm to
our lens and lexicon. 

These metal grates
beneath our boots
can only last so long.

  

                  for Cameron Anstee

 

 

 

Rob Winger [photo credit: Kristal Winger] is the author of four books of poetry, including his latest, It Doesn’t Matter What We Meant. He lives in the hills northeast of Toronto, where he teaches at Trent University.