Hobble Creek Review
Hobble Creek Review
Jill Crammond Wickham
Following the LaChute:  A Minor Adirondack Odyssey


The water is louder than our words,
more powerful than the guns of the revolution
fought on its banks.

We are following the river,
legs wet to the knee.  

We can not hear our breath, only feel the steady rhythm of footsteps on     
     the trail.  

Our eyes work the tide pool,
     pinpoint an unmarked sneaker, tread up, in a tide pool.  
              My son rushes to the other side of the foot bridge,
                        spies the watery mate,
                                  and the mother load—black pants, a pair of wet wool socks.  

This obsession with death.  
     Guns fashioned from Legos, sticks, fingers, limbs.  
               A phase, or a premonition?       Does he already understand
                         pacing the water’s rapid aisles   we are all going to die?  

Follow the river.  
     At its mouth, a cemetery.
               Without a dead body in the shallows,
                         we count on luck among the stones.  Death does not disappoint.  

A long-dead uncle, died at birth.  The boy discovers
     his great-grandmother was just a child when she had a funeral
               for her first son.  He asks, if they buried him near the river
                         do we swim over his bones?
Jill Crammond Wickham is a poet and artist, funding her writing habit by
running a teaching art studio for children.  Her poetry has appeared or is
forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Blue Fifth Review (broadside), Naugatuck
River Review, Wicked Alice, Weave and others.  Jill is an editor of the journal
Ouroboros and a senior contributor to the online poetry community, Read.
Write. Poem.