Summer Poetry by Steven Ris

Editor's note: Receiving email with delights tucked inside, is what being an editor is all about. Enjoy these two summer poems as we introduce Steven Ris.

A message from Steven Ris:

My wife, Jean, and I are full time residents of TI Park. I am a retired teacher, now in my second post-employment year of reading, writing and loving life here on the River.

I am submitting two poems below, each of which has to do with the River we live on and belong to. The River and its natural environs are themes I keep being drawn to in my poetry, but in the two you find here the River is most prominent and I think most appropriate for TI Life.

A River Passing

Loose days of early summer,
Heedless but passing on like
A tanker’s quiet churn.
I in mine, you in yours,
Deep flow and sparkling wave,
One river.

Passing clear by yielding shores,
No deflecting heights or load of silt
To weigh each moment’s passage.

And yet,

In timeless days each moment’s chance
Eludes, defers, and passes.
We two, as diverting eddies on
Opposing shores, swirling in accustomed shelter
From the promise of the stream.

Then,

Giving way as space and time surrender
To summer’s yawning, we float unburdened
Past the islands and the shoals, bobbing gently
On our limpid carriage,
Joining in the slipstream,
And parting,
And finding again in aimless tide.

by Steven Ris, Thousand Island Park, NY

One Morning on the River

We drifted in our canoe
along the quiet river,
near the dark shore,
draped with moss
and veiled in a pall of mist.

The river dripped from our paddles,
reclaiming its water
in circles of tiny shock waves,
obliterated in the wake
of our passage.

Shadowed banks encroached on the shallows
with low hum and murmur,
but we were carried on,
enveloped in the carriage
of our silence.

A beached and abandoned dinghy,
plundered by the woods,
ennobled with mold and decay,
joined roots and debris
of the looming oak.

Past the ghosts of the departed,
our paddles quickening
as we slid softly along,
stealing past the keen eye
of Charon.

We continued downstream,
heading home,
leaving the near shoreline
as the mist lifted from the river.

By Steven Ris, Thousand Island Park, NY