Spring 2010

In a Diner Above the Lamoille River

Author

Greg Delanty

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Author Information

Greg Delanty is Artist-in-Residence and Poet at Saint Michael's College in Vermont. His poetry collections include Collected Poems, 1986–2006 (2006); The Ship of Birth (2003); The Blind Stitch (2001); The Hellbox (1998); American Wake (1995); Southward (1992); and Cast in the Fire (1986). He has been honored by the Poetry Society of England, the Arts Council of Ireland, and the Royal Literary Fund, among others. In 2007, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. He is currently the Vice President of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, and will be its next President.

In a Diner Above the Lamoille River

The rocks below on the river trail foam fins
as if they swim upstream along with the salmon
returning to their spawning grounds, leaping
falls, freshets, the ancient anonymous struggle.
The fish age instantly to mottled old-timers,
dying in the nursing pools of their birth waters.
A tour group of elderly are the only other diners,
their skin mottled not unlike the salmon.
They seem to get along. They jaw about the weather,
the water height, the amount to tip.
One woman’s trembling hand fills the diner questionnaire
with praise. I scribble this on the back of mine,
and tip the kind waitress a little more than usual.
She laid their steaming bowls like a priestess setting
her libation on the altar of trembling elder gods.

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