poem

by Zachary Konkol

Flood

My poplar workbench is floating and

bumping the ceiling joists with a gentle    thump;

you’d think the sound would be deafening, the scale of it,

watching the rising water from the dining room window

with the sun in full display, but here, at the edge of the floodplain,

there’s only that gentle    thump,

the water lapping at the front porch stairs,

and the river smelling of earth and moldy books;

there’s nothing later to announce its movement

through the first-floor heartwood flooring

except the cat’s alarm, who bounds upstairs to hiding;

the books, the vinyls, photographs, art; everything we can carry,

in a mad rush, tripping up the stairs, until,

as water reaches ankle depth,

my brother arrives and gently navigates a forest green canoe

through the front door with a    thunk,

cat carrier in stow

Is this our lives?

These cardboard boxes stacked, crammed into the second floor?

this mud-caked furniture? these rusted tools?

these piles of water-logged plaster and flooring?

these stains that will never scrub out?

This loss?

The green canoe is a Mad River canoe, and very pretty,

with a mahogany trim that sparkles in the right light.

But rivers don’t get mad, even though, like us

they’re just water, a few minerals, some dirt, and a bit of life,

slowly draining to sea.

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Zachary Konkol is a graduate of Murray State University's undergraduate creative writing program. He currently works as a project manager and analyst under a contract with the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council. He lives along the Kentucky River in downtown Frankfort with his wife, Nicole, and two cats.