David Cravens
Twelvemile Creek

as the sun sets over the St Francis River
             I bank my boat near Rockpile Mountain
             at the mouth of Twelvemile Creek
             unload my dog, my tent, my gear
             and light a cigar
the air hums with a chorale
             katydids, crickets, cicadas, and toads
             and I recall on a prior August
             in eighteen sixty-three
             Sam Hildebrand camped here
             having emerged from the swamps
             where he and his men sought refuge
             after a desperate shootout with federals
the river was full of otters then
             and the air with the drumming of grouse
             the scream of panthers
             and bear ambled down from the forest
             to gorge in bygone mussel beds
some hundred years before that
             Antoine du Pratz scouted this river
             and everyday saw bison
             (a hundred head or better)
             dusting for fleas in the sandbars
             ivory-billed woodpeckers, elk
             and countless carolina parakeets
             brilliant colors flashing in sun
in seventeen sixty-four
             Jean-Bernard Bossu moored his boat
             where this river meets the Mississippi
             but he could not sleep
             for the clamor of swans, cranes, and geese
             and the thunderous din of pigeons
             (eclipsing the sun in flocks stretching miles)
but by eighteen nineteen just a few bison
              still roamed the Belleview Valley
             from which the St Francis draws forth
             as most had been harried south
             where the river pooled in the swamps
and by eighteen thirty-eight
             scarcely left were these
             but the hills were yet full of wolves
             (a pair of their ears bore a two-dollar bounty)
             and turkey flocked in such numbers
             that when settlers sowed seed
             the birds would often devour the kernels
             before they could even be covered
not far from Twelvemile Creek
             is the only hollow on the St Francis
             so ruggedly inaccessible
             as to have remained near-unmolested
             by the forty-year railroad lumber boom
             that raped these hills of virgin timber
when I discovered this hidden gorge
             I found a floodriven cabin
             and came across a coffee can
             filled with old dowagiacs
             wooden lures with flaking paint
             and rusty treble-hooks
and in the depths of the great depression
             when my friend Todd's father was yet a boy
             and deer and turkey in this state
             were near as extinct as money
             he'd bring a lardcan of these plugs
             down to this riverbottom
             and fill a burlap sack with fish
             for it was not unlikely then
             to catch thirty big smallmouth a day
wading into the water
             where it pools at the foot of a bluff
             I hold my cigar above me
             submerse myself in the motif
             of purification, redemption
             and according to Jung, the subconscious
             what Thales called the core of the universe
             unchanging—underlying all change
             but Heraclitus said we could not do it twice
I surface with a crawfish in my free hand
             arching its back as it snaps at the air
             sun glinting off its wet armor
             it's a species found nowhere else
             struggling with extinction
             and I begin to think Heraclitus right
rivers pump life through these valleys and hills
             like blood vortexing the body
             and our histories are united with theirs
             for to trace the past is to follow rivers
             and their health is a reflection
             of all that of which they sustain
my great-grandmother Huffman
             remembered the St Francis swamps
             of thousand-year-old cypress
             when wolves howled from every direction
             in answer to sawmill whistles
             and she watched these wetlands bled
             told stories of gar the length of boats
             turtles two men couldn't carry
and by nineteen thirty-six the Sikeston Standard
             called this massacred wilderness
             a newly realized dream
             saying the worthless swamplands
             now blossomed as the proverbial rose
             bisected by concrete highways
             through former beds of lakes and sloughs
Hildebrand hailed from Pennsylvania Dutch
             and they had a fitting proverb
             we inherit the land not from our ancestors
             but lease it from our children
             and in the seven score years
             since he camped by this stream
             we've swelled from around a billion
             to seven times that many
             (by subsisting on fossil carbon)
and those Pennsylvanians kept birds in their mines
             to warn of toxic defilement
             and too, this river's a coalmine canary
             and every species it's nurturing
             is a thread in an intricate tapestry
             from which only so many strands can be torn
             before it unravels completely

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