American Life in Poetry: Column 262

When we hear news of a flood, that news is mostly about the living, about the survivors. But at the edges of floods are the dead, too. Here Michael Chitwood, of North Carolina, looks at what’s floating out there on the margins.

The Coffins

Two days into the flood

they appear, moored against

a roof eave or bobbing caught

in the crowns of drowned trees.

Like fancy life boats

from an adventurer’s flag ship,

brass plating and grips,

walnut sheen, scroll work,

they slip through the understory

on this brief, bad river.

What have they discovered

and come back to account?

Or is this the beginning

of the marvelous voyage

and they plan never to return?

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2000 by Michael Chitwood, whose most recent book of poems is Spill, Tupelo Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from Tar River Poetry, Vol. 48, no. 1, Fall, 2008, by permission of Michael Chitwood and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.