Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Anna Elizabeth SchmidtSeptember 15, 2016
At the Edge of the Mississippi
 
After years of watching a brick-lined horizon,
I returned to the river’s tattered body, listened
for a murmur to surface, to remind me
that hope once abandoned can be regained.
 
There were no flowers along the riverbank,
no ducks resting in the mud, only a shadow
cast by the highway overpass and some crows
scurrying about the sidewalk for crumbs.
 
What might have been a prayer
was a boat gurgling in the distance,
and the murky water veiled those pleas
the history books obscure as when numbers
 
steal prisoners’ names. I waited to see
if spirits would make themselves known
in the metronome of water carving land,
but the river remained a river, nothing more.  
 
I scooped a handful of sand, rubbed it
between my palms until they chafed.
I held a stone like ice to my lips and sank
my feet into the silt until they numbed.
 
I wish I could say the gestures changed me,
or that the city was made whole for a moment
by this act of veneration, in my willingness to hold
the river as a sacramental in a penitent’s hand.
 
Turning from the water, I saw a police caravan
block several downtown streets without fanfare.
The silence spread its smoke between buildings
and clung to my skin a stench I could not shake.  

 

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

The Vatican News site published the warning after a 36-minute “deep fake” —A.I.-generated—video of Pope Leo was posted on YouTube.
A week into the papacy of Pope Leo XIV—the first U.S.-born pope—hosts Colleen Dulle and Gerard O’Connell take stock of the emerging contours and dimensions of his leadership.
Inside the VaticanMay 22, 2025
Pope Leo XIV has appointed Auxiliary Bishop Michael M. Pham of San Diego to head the diocese.
OSV NewsMay 22, 2025
Our country is not only in a constitutional crisis; we are in a biblical crisis.
Terence SweeneyMay 21, 2025