(February 2000)
The Ohio river is up in the fields. Ducks are gathered at the waters edges, like old Pentecostal women at a baptism. As if the flood itself spawned flocks and flocks, the way ancient bearded thinkers thought garbage spontaneously spawned mice. The standing water makes vivid the black corn stalks left from the autumn machines.
We drove up the river, then down. The river at flood time almost lays a great peace upon the land as it smooths out ravines and covers hillocks. Only almost a great piece, though: think of the families whose tile kitchen floors are frigid mud. Think if you had no place to take off your shoes at the end of your touristy drive to see the flood.
But the ducks, with their rubber feet, don’t mind. They have congregated from far regions at the joy of a wide Ohio. You usually keep your skirts low and your ankles covered, you flirty river. But look, she’s drunk and flouncing out her petticoats, quick, don’t miss it! Quack quack.
Out in the current, clumps of brush as long as my house run by. Every little Symmes Creek or Indian Guyan Creek for 300 miles has tossed its hoard into the contest. Entire trees zip past. Years of household trashpiles, seized by the rising water so suddenly the pile has kept its shape and sprints down the current like a black battleship.