Michael Loderstedt

Kayaking the Upper Cuyahoga

We went on Mother’s Day
& all I could think of was how
my own mother hated snakes. And yet––
there they were, swimming back and forth
the lazy river all ten. One swallowed a small fish
headfirst, as if being born & eaten
were the same things.

I dreamed you were standing
in the kayak (you’d better sit down
so you don’t capsize) I dream-worried. You
had those snakes on tiny leashes pulling
like a river chariot. Triumphant

in the way nonsense seems
so right. Mother’s dead
now having traded smoke
for air, her last good
breath from an oxygen
machine. She’d only eat
ice cream those last days––
Breyers natural vanilla.

The little specks of bean
stuck to the bowl.

But this is a poem about snakes.

Michael Loderstedt was recently published in the NC Literary Review. He has also had poems published in a recent anthology entitled neighborhood Voices (Literary Cleveland/Cleveland Public Library) and received an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship in Literature in 2020.