Artwork by Fraz Mateen. Courtesy: Art Chowk Gallery.
Human-scaled or just small?
These haunting Upper Mississippi bluffs—
the foothills of cornfields not mountains—
rise on both sides of the great river
with just enough craggy-sloped grace
To hold my whole life, too,
between the changing
colors of the season,
the sounds of water and trains,
and birds extending wing
along the longest flyway in the world—
from the Arctic to Patagonia!
I keep coming back here, as Auden says somewhere,
not quite remembering why I was happy here
but nearly always unable to forget that I was—
That I am now, hiking up
the familiar rocky path
to view the same boggy sloughs
and broad green valleys
that humans have marveled at
and struggled within
for twelve thousand years—
half my life is nothing up here,
where ten thousand years
disappear like campfire smoke.
Belles hautes arêtes de la rivière
de paradis, one of Perrot’s
fellow French Voyageurs called it.
High ridges of the Paradise River?
Perhaps not, but it is
my beautiful home base.
Human-scaled or just small?
My Midwestern life—in middle-age,
still prowling the Driftless bluffs—
having seen enough of the world
to be happy here.
~ Jeffrey D. Boldt
Jeffrey D. Boldt has published more than 100 short stories, poems, and essays. His work has appeared in ‘The Wallace Stevens Journal’, ‘Berkeley Poetry Review’, ‘Tikkun’, and ‘Mickle Street Review’, among others. He has a short story forthcoming in ‘The MacGuffin’, and poems forthcoming in ‘Agave’ and the ‘J Journal’.
