Maquoqeta

kingbird attacks

bird bigger than itself.

red tail worrys

and hides in trees

overlooking river,

And a deserted military base.

deteriorated wing dam and pylon

where barges stopped

deposited war material

for this chemical scarred radiation sick place.

lately decommissioned,

discarded, old warrior,

sleeping on the banks

of the mississippi.

host now to deer and vulture

oriole and dicksissel and trespasser

i come to make photographs.

of old soldier tasks

and find melted glass lumps still

embedded in trees

silence tends rotted foundations

decades old smells and sounds

of ten thousand men living here

feeding our fathers' living war

machine.

in quonset hut rows

i walk among movie theater

rec hall,

chapel where an altar once stood

and soldiers prayed while building bombs

to answer japanese anger.

nothing now but wind and weed,

and fishing boats at the mouth of the 

maquoketa river

opposite this dead land.

the small river is lovely where it

meets the mississippi 

tangle tree and root snag 

and catfish

the war is over

the soldiers gone,

dust.

the munitions atomized

over a hundred battlefields

from normandy to diem ben phu.

i and the hawk

hide in the trees

from the burning afternoon sun

and the angry kingbird.

 

watching men fish on the iowa side

in the lovely waters of the

maquoketa.

Author's Note

Maquoketa translated from Sauk first nation: “there are bears here” / tributary of mississippi.